Echoes From A Parallel World
by icarly1969
Summary: For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it? (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)
1. Just A Dream

_I believe it may appear that I have abandoned my previous story. Sorry about that, it's just, it's been November. Guess what I have been doing? Since this story is already finished, I'll be posting one chapter every week, after I finished editing it. The portrayal of OCD may not be realistic, and if any of you readers see the flaws, please point them out, I'll correct them._

_This chapter is mostly thoughts, it's to set up the story. It could be considered a prologue, the real story starts in the next chapter._

**Disclaimers:** I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

**Warnings:** Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

**Summary:** For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it?

'Thoughts'  
>"Speech"<br>_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

><p><strong>Just A Dream<strong>

_"__Nico!"_

_Bianca waved him over, ignoring Travis, who protested briefly through the mouthful of food at the idea of the 'kid' joining the table. Nico grinned as he walked over to join her, Percy trailing after him._

_Setting his tray down, he leant over and pecked Nico on the cheek. "Hey, kitten," he greeted, affection clear in his voice._

_Nico scowled at him, feeling the flush work its way onto his cheeks._

_"__I told you to stop calling me that!"_

_"__Yes, angel," Percy muttered as he stole a few cookies out of Nico's lunchbox. It revealed the neatly inked tattoo of a series of 0's, nicely done, a perfect line down his arm._

_Nico huffed, looking away from Percy. "That's not so much better, you know," he muttered, trying to sound a little more mature to salvage some of his pride. He knew, of course, that he failed. It did not quite matter when Percy leant over and kissed him again, properly this time, right on the lips._

_He tasted like chocolate chip cookies. That, and the strawberry-flavoured toothpaste he always uses –_

Nico bolted upright in his bed. Of course, he rammed his head into the bunk above him. He stilled, waiting to see if the occupant above had woken up, and almost sighed in relief as the snoring continued. Wincing a little as he rubbed at the sore spot, he glanced at the clock hanging on the wall beside the door. At this point of time, it was more of a habit than an actual concern about the current time.

4:00AM

He flopped back down onto his bed and glared at the glow-in-the-dark stars barely visible now. Rationally, he knew that they had done nothing to offend him – he was the one who moved, after all, they can only hang there, immobile, but he was so sick of waking up at this frankly inhumane time in the morning. It's already been six months and twenty-one days, not that he was counting.

Never mind that it was always directly preceded by dreams of a life in which everything was, well, not perfect, but as good as it could get.

That was the strangest thing.

He was fairly certain that people were not supposed to be able to remember their dreams, especially not those peaceful ones. He himself certainly could not recall any of the dreams that were not a particularly vivid nightmare.

Perhaps the ability to retain the memories was the trade-off for being woken up directly when the dream was about to end?

Whatever the reason was, he had been consistently woken up every night at 4:00AM after a glimpse of a life that was better than he could ever hope for, and, truth to be told? It was pissing him off a little.

He shut his eyes bitterly, trying to forget how it felt, to be part of that world.

Whoever said that a taste was better than nothing clearly did not know just how much it sucks, to be offered a quick preview of what could have been yours, directly before it was taken away and you were left wishing you could have more all while knowing, logically, that it was not possible. If he concentrated hard enough, he could still faintly taste Percy's lips on his, from when they had kissed, in this weird dream-world-universe thing that his subconscious appeared to have built for him.

He forced his eyes open. It was far too easy to soak in the world his mind had created. Easy, to the point that it was hard to remember that it was not real, to forget the fact that this was reality, and that was just a dream.

He needed something to do.

Something to distract him from where he just knew his train of thoughts was leading to.

He did not want to move, however. Besides, was it truly that hard to admit to himself that Percy was Annabeth's has been and always would be, in reality?

To believe, even for a single second, that Percy could have felt something for him when he asked Nico out, was what made him the fool in this play. This story. Of course, he had known that there was something off about this whole charade, but he had brushed it off.

A bloody idiot, that's what he was, for thinking that Percy could ever return his feelings.

He had never learnt how to swim, but when Percy had offered to take him somewhere, anywhere, for a date, he had agreed without thinking twice and allowed himself to be caught by the riptide of emotions.

To be swept away into the ocean, where Percy's affections and reassurances were really the only things keeping him afloat.

For a while, everything was perfect. Even though their relationship was kept in the shadows, away from everyone else. Even though he was still invisible at home and non-existent in school.

He managed to bury the little voice telling him that this was a joke, a dare - it was not real, cannot be real. He ignored the rational and sane part of him telling him to rebuild the wall and keep Percy out, to leave now and protect himself. To save himself by not setting his feelings up for the time when he would eventually hit the ground after falling too fast, too hard.

He just had to accept Leo's dare to go to the classroom behind the auditorium, the one that was always locked, the one that was too dusty and unused for him to want to go close to. The door being unlatched was the first indication, but he pushed it open, regardless. What he saw behind the doors crushed him.

Percy was flushed, breathing hard and fast and locked in passion with her, hands travelling close to dangerous territory –

Nico had fled.

He was not too proud to admit that.

'Dangerous territory,' he thought. His lips twitched slightly at the wording. He looked at the clock again.

4:11AM.

Huh.

It appears that introspection was quite time-consuming.

'I should wash up a little. Might as well work on staying awake properly, since I'm not going back to sleep anytime soon.'

He clambered out of bed a little unsteadily, careful not to make too much noise, too aware of Hazel snoring lightly in the bunk above.

The bunk that Bianca once slept in.

Nico winced a little at that. He had promised himself that he would never blame Hazel for everything that had happened. She was an excellent sister and Nico could accept that while she would never replace Bianca or the position she held in his heart, he had the space to accept another sister, one who was just as lost as him when it came to navigating the murky waters that was their lives with father, if not more so.

After all, it was not Hazel's fault that she turned up on the one month anniversary of Bianca's death, just as it was not her fault mother walked out when she found out that father was unfaithful. Hazel was slightly older than Nico and younger than Bianca, implying that father had bedded Hazel's mother only a few months before Nico had been conceived.

He sat back down, rather abruptly, feeling a little out of it. He did not want to think about this now. Then, he realised that there was a dust bunny on the floor, near the foot of his bed. His skin crawled a little as he wondered if he should clean up a little. Who knows how much dust could have gathered under the bed or settled on the floor while he was asleep?

Suddenly, he was extra aware of all the dirt that had probably accumulated since the last time he cleaned up. He was itching to get started to clean up now, but he refrained from doing so. _Breathe in, breathe out and focus on breathing._ It took a while for it to work, but he calmed, eventually. The urge to rearrange everything precisely and neatly faded to an annoyance worrying in the corner of his mind. Then, he sighed, shoulders sinking a little. No wonder Percy went back to his ex, even after swearing that he never wanted to do anything with her again.

Anyone was better than a 5'6" clean freak who flipped over bread crumbs in the carpet on better days and got obsessive with tiny details like the placement of stationary and cutlery on the worst.

Sure, he had come a long way from that, but it still creeps up every now and then, especially when he got a little more stressed.

He was forever grateful to Hazel, though, for putting up with him during the period in which he attacked everything with cleaning supplies and start rearranging everything whenever he thought it was dirty or messy, even if it was in the middle of the night and she was trying to sleep. She was more understanding than his father ever was.

Nico had no idea what had changed.

After Bianca had died, Hades was the one who had helped Nico through the compulsiveness. Even after Maria had walked out, they were close. Even if he treated Hazel better than he did with Nico, they had the understanding, the bond.

Then, Hades started spending less time with them – locking himself up in his room, spending extra hours in the lab after work hours to work on his pet project, forgetting that Hazel was around sometimes. It started around the time Nico started having the dreams, and even if Nico did not believe in coincidences, it felt a little far-fetched to say that his father's behaviour was linked to his dreams.

It hurts, though, that instead of offering help, his father just sent him directly to the psychologist and let the doctor deal with him, without giving him a chance to try, to recover on his own first.

Reading, he decided. Reading would take his mind off these thoughts.

He could not focus on the words, though. Instead, he found himself wondering. Even he indulges in the occasional what-ifs, after all. What if Hazel had never arrived with the letter, the photograph and the clothes on her back her only belongings? Perhaps mother would never have left if Hazel had never entered their lives.

Ha.

Who was he kidding?

He knew that mother had never liked the States. He knew that she had always wanted to go back to Italy, preferably with her children.

More specifically, Bianca.

He looked at the silver of a reflection he could see, on the metal stand of the lamp.

Pale skin, high cheekbones, messy untameable hair and brown-almost-black eyes. Enough for people who notices him to call him pretty. Not visible enough though, apparently.

His parents had not acknowledged Nico's existence since Bianca had died. The only real sign that they remembered he existed was the pocket money left in an envelope on the fridge every Saturday morning.

He could understand, even if he could not sympathize or empathize, as they were a bit caught up in their fight against each other. For months, their relationship simply worsened steadily, eventually becoming a tense silence whenever they were in the same room together, whether or not Nico was present.

Hazel was simply a catalyst, a simple, convenient excuse for mom to justify leaving. Deep down, he knew that if Hazel had never arrived, she would simply have found another reason to walk away.

If he were to be honest with himself, he was truly surprised that she had held on to the marriage and the family for this long.

He was an expert at lying, though.

Especially when it came to lying to himself.

It had been way too easy to pretend that he had never saw this coming, that he had actually expected her to stay for him, if not for anything else.

There was a reason he joined the drama club and excelled in the theatre electives he took up.

It was not much, just little things. Things like the fact that he was more visible on stage than he was anywhere else, even if nobody ever remembers him, even if he was only ever the character he was playing at the moment to them. He always took the mute and insignificant roles no one else wanted, only standing in for the main characters when the actual actors were absent, just to keep things going. The teacher, at least, acknowledged that he was good at this.

Acting was really one of the only talents he had and was proud of.

Doesn't that just say so much about his life?

He loved being someone else, though. As that person, he had the reassurance that even though he was less than perfect and was not particularly important, he would still do something right eventually.

Unlike in real life, where he just made mistakes after mistakes, since everything he did was always wrong, no matter how hard he tried.

In a way, he was addicted to the person he was and could be when he was not the failure of a son and a brother that he was in reality, after he left the stage and went back home.

The clock told him that it was now 4:23 AM.

He gave up on reading the book. Leaning back, he stared at the ceiling. There were no tiles there for him to count, he noted absently. Inevitably, his mind strayed off once more. Obviously, it went down the forbidden path of thoughts.

Percy Jackson.

An affair. With Percy Jackson.

It sounded sordid, even in his head.

That's really what it was, though. Since, when he confronted Percy about his not-really-ex-girlfriend, Percy revealed that it had never meant anything, that he had just wanted to explore and try something new after Annabeth was no longer a part of his life.

Percy had simply been curious, and Nico had stood out in the sea of students in the school.

He supposed that he should be flattered. Out of so many boys in this school, he was the one Percy had chosen. It hurts, though, and he was too heartbroken and strung out and emotionally wrung out to be optimistic about this.

In a way, it was similar to the state he had been in when Bianca ended up in the car accident after leaving the house in a fit because of a silly argument they had.

Only difference was, the first time, no one even noticed, and he eventually managed to pick himself up again to press on in life. This time, though…

He had made sure to keep everything quiet, since Percy had never wanted anyone to know and he was okay with being silent. Somehow, it had leaked, though. And, like all rumours, it spread like wildfire the moment the wind caught hold of it.

People started giving him sideways looks, and some, in particular, took to sneering at him and giving him a wide berth. Percy remained unaffected, whether due to his status or the fact that no one had known he was the one with Nico.

Nico took the fall for them.

He caught the eye of those who sought out weaker members of their community. He was not weak, not really, but he had been defenceless and was caught off guard.

Truthfully, he was able to fight back and more than capable of defending himself. After the first time he was cornered, he had swallowed his pride and asked his study partner to teach him how to fight. Reyna had agreed, and she had never asked him why, for which he was thankful.

Fighting was against the rules, though, and every single time he fought back, he was punished alongside them, more often than not. They almost suspended him for it, bringing it to his father's and Hazel's attention. She had begged him to stop fighting, tears shining but not falling. His father had simply gave him a cold look and told him to stop being so childish.

Detention after detention, until he learnt to just take it and keep quiet, then nurse his wounds silently later when he was alone, when there was no one around to see.

At least they never left visible bruises.

Nico rubbed his side absently, even though that bruise was already mostly healed. It has almost been two weeks. He should watch out, the next 'fight' would not be that far away.

After Percy, he had started dreaming. By the time the rumours started flying and he began to despise going to school, the other realm was ingrained into his life. For a while, he had lived solely for the little glimpses of the life he could have had.

Hazel broke him out of it the one time he had told her, telling her that this was the reality, and he should focus on his life. She brought him back on track.

It helps that at the start, in his dreams, he was pining for Percy too. He knew that he was a selfish brat for revelling in that fact. At that time, though, he was simply glad that he was not alone in practically suffocating. That, together with the fact that the only time he could still meet Bianca again was in that dream world he visits every night, helped to cement his belief in it. Even though, logically, he knew that the place in his mind simply does not exist, that it was a fraction of his imagination, he liked to think that it, and all its inhabitants, was just as real as he was.

Even though he knew that Bianca was dead and gone and would never come back, and that his mother never cared much for him.

Then, Percy went and asked him out.

The next time he fell asleep, they were dating. Ever since then, he had been waking up to the end of their interactions more often than not.

He had tried to be jealous, but he just ended up feeling heartsick.

He was tired of forever being second to someone else. He would never admit it, but he wanted someone who would love him unconditionally. Someone who would care enough to care about how he felt. In a way, he was glad for his dream self.

At least, he knew that Percy would never do the same thing Percy from reality did. Dream-Percy was always caring and loving, doting on him, and, mostly, proud of him. He was alright with holding hands in public, willing to let his friends see that he was with Nico and he never failed to praise Nico when he thought that Nico had done well. Even if he always ended up blushing, he knew that Percy had never been ashamed of him.

Unlike in reality.

It was not fair, really, to assume that Percy had been ashamed of their…affair, but in the times when he was feeling particularly vulnerable, he wished that he had had the courage to have asked Percy if they could have gone public.

At least then, he would have found out earlier that Percy had never felt anything for him and saved himself from the hardest part of the heartbreak.

Gosh, he sounded delusional, Nico thought as he slid down the chair a little. Wishing that he would be better off in a dream than in real life.

It was, after all, just a dream.

Wasn't it?

* * *

><p>*** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***<p> 


	2. The Invisible Killer

_I have a lot of plot bunnies currently bouncing around in my head, and that's making it hard to concentrate and focus and finish up some of my stories. It's the start of more, though... and new chapter! This is the introduction of the actual story, and the story's picking up. Drop a review when you're done, let me know what you thought about this chapter, please?_

**Disclaimers:** I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

**Warnings:** Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

**Summary:** For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it?

'Thoughts'  
>"Speech"<br>_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

><p><strong>The Invisible Killer<strong>

The thing was, he did not have many friends. He could admit that. The problem now, though, was that when he was actually seeking their company, he found that they were not around. Jason and Rachel were on vacation with their respective parents, Leo was visiting his father's family and Reyna was visiting her sister, a researcher currently doing a project in the Amazon forests.

He ended up drifting around a little aimlessly in the library. The silence was blissful, the only noise being the occasional rustle of the pages being turned and the hum of the air conditioner doing its best in summer. There was almost no one here except for the librarian and a few of the most faithful patrons.

It was mostly due to the fact that the library was located on the far side of the forest off the side of the town, with only a small, cobble-stoned path leading to it from the small road splicing off the main one.

Nico never minded, though. The walk was peaceful, and the library itself was clean. He could imagine how this place would look, however, without the care taken to maintain it. Left on its own, it would likely deteriorate to become that abandoned shack where monsters live in, the one seen in horribly done horror movies.

As he wandered down the aisles, he breathed in the smell of paper, and ink. That never failed to cheer him up. Most of the books here were old, clearly showing their age, yet they were all so obviously well cared for. Especially the ones in the classic collections and the historical ones. His favourite was the manga section, though – despite being the smallest library, it has the most extensive collection and every book there was an original copy. Even if that meant that every single book in those collections were in Japanese, or, occasionally, Chinese.

He took Japanese as a third language for a reason, after all. Of course, he was not fluent, and progress was slow whenever he tried to read, but he was willing to try. He was getting better at it. Picking out the next instalment in the series he had been following, he settled down in his corner. It was slightly dusty, but it was tolerable. It helps that there was a cushy beanbag and no one to bother him there.

Letting himself get absorbed into the world crafted out by the words and the drawings, he detached himself from reality. Time did not mean much when he was reading, and he was never one to put down a book once he got started.

"Hey," someone greeted. He looked up, annoyed. He did not like being yanked out of the comfortable little world he was in so rudely, especially if it came with the added bonus of human interactions. He limits his circle of living things to his pet dog, Cerberus, his half-sister and his friends.

Then, he registered who it was.

"Leo? What are you doing back here?"

Leo motioned for him to scoot over, before proceeding to throw himself onto the beanbag next to Nico. Never mind that there was barely enough space for a grown adult, and that they could both fit there only because they were both too skinny.

He grinned at Nico. "I missed my favourite grouchy, grumpy, little kitten, of course! I just had to get back here sooner."

The annoyance came back in full throttle. There was an edge of fondness, however, that Nico was not quite willing to look into. He settled for letting the irritation take over instead.

"That's not an actual answer, you know."

The grin simply slid off his features. Nico remained silent as Leo stared blankly at the bookshelf in front of the two of them.

"You could unload your baggage here, I'll listen."

Leo's lips twitched a little. "That's not the main problem, actually."

"What is, then?" Nico prompted.

"There's a serial killer running rampant."

Nico tried to think of something to say other than "Oh". Considering his rather extensive vocabulary, it was rare for him to find himself speechless.

Leo cracked a half-hearted smile, as if he could read Nico's thoughts. "Yeah, oh."

For a while, it appears that Nico would have to prod Leo for more details.

"They told me to leave, because the victims were picked completely randomly. There's nothing consistent, it's like the killer decided that he wanted to kill this person and just did it."

Nico considered the new information. He reclined against the wall a little. "That would make the person a psychopath, wouldn't it? It's actually not entirely impossible."

Silence settled like a blanket. They stayed there, in the corner of an antique library.

Nico broke it.

"Why did you come to look for me, then?"

Leo startled. "What made you think I looked for you?"

"You wouldn't normally come to the library," Nico pointed out. Leo looked a little sheepish when he realised that he was truly caught out.

"True."

After a considerable pause, he revealed his true intentions.

"I need your help."

Nico's eyes flicked to his face. He looked unusually serious. "With what?"

"Research."

"Research."

"Yeah," Leo confirmed. "I need help with that."

Nico sighed theatrically. "It's always research. What're you going to do when I'm no longer around?"

Leo grinned at him. "Go to Reyna, of course." Nico stared at him. Of course that was his response. What had he been expecting when he was asking? He brought the topic back on track.

"So, what's this research about?"

Leo seemed to be thinking about it. Nico straightened up, stretching a little. Leo copied his movements, before walking off, expecting Nico to follow. "Aliens, possibly. Inter-dimensional Travel and the Multiverse theories, too."

Nico stared after him. He turned back when he realised that Nico was not following. He blinked a little.

"And portals and wormholes," he added.

* * *

><p>The pile of books could be used to build a fortress around them, if they had been inclined to do so.<p>

There were enough, after all. They had borrowed every book that possibly linked to the topics in question. The librarian checked everything out for them without asking questions, since she knew Nico quite well. Carting everything home was a nightmare, though. Nico's bed became the base.

"Why the sudden interest?"

Leo paused in his reading, thinking about the question. "I overheard some of them arguing over the possibility of this killer being something non-human, as in, something from another world." He motioned at Nico when he opened his mouth to give Leo his opinion. "I know. I know, it's not entirely possible, and I thought that aliens probably sound more plausible, but I wanted to be sure. Be prepared, you know, just in case it is not just a theory, that it is real that the universe had played a giant cosmic joke on us and made us the last world to find out that multidimensional travel is actually possible, although it could –"

"I wasn't going to say that. I was going to ask why they assume that this killer is not from our world," Nico protested, a little indignant.

Leo stopped talking at that, before backtracking. "I, well, sorry for assuming… But, well, they are thinking about this killer not being human because of the way the victims were killed, as well as the fact that no one can see the killer."

"The killer could just as easily kill these people when no one else is around. Then no one would have seen him," Nico pointed out.

"It's not that no one had seen him, it's that no one can see him. Some of the killings were done in public. Quite often, it was on a mostly desolated road, but there were people in the coffee shops or book shops who looked out and saw the pedestrian just being vaporized into ashes. And it's not just one or two people, every single witness found said the same thing." Seeing Nico's disbelief, he was quick to add, "And the security cameras recorded this too. So many that you can't say it didn't happen."

Nico processed the information dump.

"Can I see those videos?"

"Why do you assume I have it?"

Nico gave him a flat look.

"Okay, alright, I have it. Geez, can't you think of me as a good, law-abiding person for once, and not automatically assume that I have done something I wasn't supposed to have done?" Leo grumbled as he fished around in his pockets.

Nico smirked. "I know you better than that, Valdez. I keep quiet because I'm your friend, but you can't assume that I would think the best of you, since, even with Jason and Reyna around, I probably know you the best."

Leo paused in his search and looked up at Nico. "Did you just make a pun?" Nico flushed. "Did you? Oh my gods, you did! Nico Di Angelo finally lightened up and made a joke! Not a very funny joke, but it's still a pun, which is as good as a joke!" He cackled as Nico glared at him.

The effect was kind of ruined, though, thanks to the red colouring his cheeks.

Leo continued guffawing as Nico chucked a pillow at him.

* * *

><p>It was six in the afternoon and they were only three-quarters done with the stack of books. Leo had to leave, though, due to some other appointment. After confirming that there was, indeed, an invisible killer terrorising the people, Leo left, leaving Nico with the big pile of papers and books and some leftover snacks Leo had not managed to polish off.<p>

Of course, being the horrible cook that he was, Nico decided not to risk the kitchen's wrath, choosing instead to finish it up and deem it a proper dinner. After cleaning everything up, he stacked the research materials neatly on his table and waited for Hazel to come back from her date.

He had trouble falling asleep that night. The hands of the clock crawled slowly around the rim, circling the numbers. Tracking its movement, Nico contemplated his options. Continue trying to fall asleep, and eventually manage to sleep for a while after being bored to death, or wake up and do useful things, then regret the lack of sleep in the morning? He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

Then, he opened them again.

11:47PM.

He rolled over, facing the wall. Hazel's light snores filled the silence.

She had passed out on her bed moments after she fell into it, dreaming her night away peacefully. Nico wished that he could be like her. He wanted to shut down his brain and just stop thinking so much, but, apparently, that is way, way, too much to ask for, no matter how reasonable it was. Seven months with barely five hours of sleep every night caught up, though, and he finally fell asleep due to sheer exhaustion.

It was not that long before he jerked awake with a gasp, almost hitting his head on the bunk above.

Not wanting to wake Hazel in case a repeat of what happened the last time he woke up this way, he bolted for the bathroom. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself against the wash basin, heart still racing wildly. The nightmares doesn't happen often, thank gods, but when they do, they were brutal. And the emotional baggage they unearth left him reeling every single time, forcing him to keep up the mantra to remind himself that it wasn't real, that it was just that – a nightmare. Not reality.

Bianca had died long ago in reality, and Percy had not broken up with him that way. They had never even been an item to begin with.

He splashed some water on his face, hoping to clear his mind.

Glancing at the clock hanging on the wall beyond the door, he saw the time.

3:56AM

Nico couldn't help the semi-bitter smirk that formed.

'Seems like there's no point trying to fall asleep again,' he thought. He stared at the wash-basin, fascinated by the water swirling into the sinkhole.

'Wasn't there a story in which someone was on a boat in a whirlpool like that? Or vortex, whatever it was called?' The question popped into his mind randomly, and he thought about it for a while. Eventually, he decided that he should call it quits, as there was no way he could force himself to remember the name.

He straightened up with the intention of picking up where Leo and he left off and burying himself in the research. Before he was out of the toilet door, however, a movement in the corner of his peripheral vision caught his attention. He whipped around, a little tense and stared at the mirror.

His reflection was not staring back at him. In fact, he had just walked out of the shower, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, apparently talking to someone outside the _closed_ door. The one that was very much open in front of him.

He should have flipped. He should have lost his composure and possibly thrown something at the mirror, screaming that it was possessed, that someone should look into either replacing it, or exorcising it.

He did not.

He did, however, spare a moment to wonder if he had finally lost it, due to sleep deprivation and the ton of emotional baggage Hazel had always told him was unhealthy, and had gone out of his mind. Maybe he should have looked into the therapy sessions that even Rachel had suggested he attend.

His reflection turned around and spotted him. Completely unaware of how Nico was feeling, he greeted, "Hello, I've been waiting for quite a long while to meet you in person, Nico of Earth 197."

Suffice to say, Nico would never admit to having fainted.

He only suffered an overload and found it hard to maintain a conscious awareness of what was going on around him. Yes. That was exactly what it was.

There was someone saying something to him as he came back to the land of the living, breathing and sane. Opening his eyes, he registered that he was still in the bathroom. More importantly, he was lying in the bathroom floor, indicating that he likely had been there the remaining of the night.

Secondly, Hazel was looking down at him with concern, her hand on his forehead and sounding as if she was trying not to panic. She visibly relaxed when he blinked at her while she waved her other hand around more.

"Why are you here?"

"I…'m not sure…I think I fell…."

She looked a little alarmed, before proceeding on to gently chastise him for not being careful about watching where he stepped. As she helped him up, she went back to being concerned as he swayed on his feet for a while, dizzy after being in a horizontal position for that long. She asked if he was feeling alright. He could feel the migraine coming on.

Nico was still trying to orientate himself as she led him to their room. He nodded mutely in response to all her questions, adamantly refusing to acknowledge the part of his brain screaming at him that something had, indeed, happen the previous night, or, rather, earlier in the morning, that there was someone else in the mirror and that he had the right to have lost his composure and passed out on the spot in shock.

After she left to prepare breakfast, he went back and checked the mirror, just in case. There was absolutely no one hiding there, and nothing to indicate that anything could have happened the night before. It was just an absolutely normal and innocent mirror.

As he changed, Nico wondered if he should take up Jason's and Rachel's suggestion of taking pills to help him fall asleep. If he was already starting to hallucinate, this lack of sleep was more serious than he had thought it actually was.

* * *

><p>*** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***<p> 


	3. I'm Fine

_This is one day late, but Merry Christmas anyway! Mostly a filler chapter, to keep things going on. _

**Disclaimers:** I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

**Warnings:** Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

**Summary:** For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it?

'Thoughts'  
>"Speech"<br>_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

><p><strong>I'm Fine<strong>

As the teacher droned on and on about inane things such as the importance of arranging the equation into the right order, he allowed his mind to drift without direction.

As long as he did not think about the mirror, he was fine.

Which, of course, meant that he thought about a mirror. Mirrors and alternate worlds and wormholes and aliens. Leo was getting to him.

It made sense, though. If what he had seen had been real, then it had to be either an alternate universe, or magic. While theoretically, there was actually multiple loopholes in every single theory about multiverses, it made more sense than magic, but what if it was just –

"Nico?"

Startled, he jerked upright a little, before trying, unsuccessfully, to shrink back into his seat. Scanning the board quickly, he did some mental calculation.

"X is 17, Y is 19, and length of AB is 3 cm."

The teacher sighed. "Correct on all counts, but I asked you to open the window. It's getting stuffy in here."

Nico felt his face heat up as he complied. Sitting back down, he noticed that the boys behind the teachers were either snickering or sneering at him. He tried to sink into his seat and appear unobtrusive.

"Nerd," one of them mouthed, before sitting up straight and looking at the board when the teacher turned around.

A flash of anger surged through him at that. Being good at schoolwork was not a bad thing, they have no right to belittle him for that. Nerd was not even a proper insult.

He caught himself before he could glare at them, though, choosing to glare at his worksheets instead. After a while, though, he felt sorry for them. They never did anything to offend him, they should not be taking the heat for those jerks.

From the looks of it, though, he should probably expect another confrontation soon.

It's just a matter of after class, or after school.

'More reasons to drop by the pharmacy and finding ways to keep Hazel from finding out and worrying. Yay,' he thought sarcastically. He had not been in a good mood to begin with. Really, it's as if life was just out to get him today.

Every time he saw a mirror, he got a little more unsettled. It was making him unusually skittish, to the point that even Leo noticed that there was something off about his behaviour today. Thankfully, there were not many mirrors in the school. He actively avoided those he knew were around, too, but he realised that the people who took pleasure in hurting him noticed that today was a particularly bad day. They were definitely not above taking advantage of it.

It's like they wanted Nico to fight back.

The urge to start scrubbing down everything he might have to come in contact with started to gnaw at him. Keeping it under wraps was hard, with the additional stress of trying his best to not anticipate the upcoming 'fight'.

Nico was really just glad that Leo knew him well enough and respected his privacy by not pressing on after Nico had not given him a straight response initially.

For some reason, Rachel had come back earlier, too, and he ran into her in the corridor once, colliding into her with enough force to make her drop all her books. As he lay there, sprawled out on the floor on top of her with the papers and books scattered around them, the sense of déjà vu came back in full force. It was how they had first met, but that should not make him feel as…disjointed from reality as it does.

"I know it's comfortable here, Nico, but it would be a little more comfortable for me were you to get off. You're really light, but it's still a lot more weight than absolutely comfortable," she remarked after a while.

It shook Nico out of the daze he had fallen into and he hurriedly got up, apologizing and scrambling for the papers as he did so.

She sat up and looked at him. Nico could feel the weight of her stare. When he met her eyes, he could see that she was thinking about something. The concern in her eyes were a little too disconcerting, too knowing.

"Are you alright?" she asked, out of the blue.

A little caught off guard, Nico automatically replied that he was fine.

She narrowed her eyes. "Leo told me that there was something off about you all day today. You're usually a lot more careful than this."

Nico stared at the pile of books and papers haphazardly stacked together in front of him, contemplating how to arrange them properly.

"If there's something wrong, talk to us, alright?" she sighed, a little too used to this. As she stood up, she stared at Nico and the books. Stooping over, she picked them up with one arm before offering Nico a hand up.

Glancing up, Nico met her eyes briefly as he accepted her help.

They stood at the corridor slightly awkwardly, before Nico hesitantly suggested that they meet in the afternoon at his place, since there was something he was interested in sharing with her.

Rachel's eyes widened a little, and she looked ready to agree when a little flash of guilt popped up. "Father's taking me out for dinner tonight…" she trailed off, before adding hastily that she could cancel.

Nico cut her off, telling her that she should spend more time with her father, and that he wasn't free tomorrow because he needed to help out at the shelter he works at as a volunteer, but they could meet up on the day after tomorrow.

She looked slightly relieved as the bell rang.

They proceeded on to their next classes respectively, and Nico didn't see her for the rest of the day. For some reason, he didn't run into Leo again either.

His mind suggested that Leo could be avoiding him because he was unsure of Nico's reaction to him talking about Nico behind his back with Rachel and possibly Reyna and Jason, but Nico silenced it. It's not as if he never suspected that they talked about him more often than not when he was not around. It's nice to have the confirmation, in a way, and the fact that they were alright with letting him know.

He was on his way home as usual. Except, he was running late since one of the teachers had him stay back to discuss his extra credit projects.

As a result, he decided to take the shortcut in the alleyways, even though he just knew that it was a bad idea. He really wanted to get home early, though. It looked like it was going to rain soon, with the clouds gathering and all that. He cursed the fact that he had not thought to bring his umbrella as he hurried down the third alley.

They were waiting for him there.

He should have expected it, he had anticipated this, but sometime between Economics and the end of school, he had been too distracted by other things and had forgotten about it.

The first punch was thrown by the redhead this time, instead of the raven that was…absent today? Coming to think of it, Nico had not seen him around the past few days. Nico did not get much time to dwell on his thoughts, yanked back into piloting his body so he could react in time, trying to duck or roll with the punches, wishing desperately that he would be let off the hook this time if he fought back.

Except for the minor detail that even if he fought back, he would still lose. There were so many of them and only one of him, he would only get more injuries. He could not count on support from the adults, either – if he brought it up to the teachers, they would just all be given detention or something like that, and the retribution the next time would be worst. Or, even better, they would twist it around and make it sound like he was the one who had went insane and attacked them. No one would ask him after that, since he was not too important in the grand scheme of things.

Not that they would have listened to him, anyway, and it's not like many people care.

They packed up as the sky shed its first tears. Sneering at Nico, they called him a few names and left. After they disappeared from his line of vision, Nico gave in to the urge to curl up on himself. They were not around to see his weakness anyway. He tried to get his breath back and wrestle his pain back under control, so he could stand up by himself and get home. Then, he would deal with this like he always does.

The rain started beating down in earnest – a rare downpour that just had to happen today. The icing on a thoroughly crappy cake. Nico found himself thoroughly soaked as he finally found the willpower to force himself to stand up, ignoring the fact that it ached everywhere and that he probably had some bruised ribs, since he was finding it hard to breathe properly and painlessly. No dinner later either, he wasn't sure his stomach could take that.

It would take a long while to get home, though. It hurt too damned much to put too much pressure on his left foot, so he leant against the wall, temporarily relieving his weight. He was already soaked anyway. Spending more time here would not change the fact. A jagged shard of pain shot through his heart as he recalled how Bianca used to leave a cup of hot chocolate out for him if he were to come home when it was raining. Especially if it was pouring. She knew how much he hated being thoroughly wet.

Hazel does it too, but it never tasted the same and he had never wanted her to replace Bianca, she was too nice a person and he refused to be that selfish. Besides, she was with Frank on a date (again), and they were probably watching the newest movie, the one he had gotten the tickets for her for. Jason and Reyna were either on the other side of the country, or were not even in the country, and Rachel and Leo had better things to do, better places to be.

Nico touched his forehead to the wall then, trying to keep the rain out of his face. At least it would be easier to breathe then. As he tried to summon the willpower to actually start walking home, his mind flitted to the world in his dreams. To the fact that there, he would probably have remembered to bring the cursed umbrella for once in his life, or if he did not, someone would notice that he was not around and look for him. Because, obviously, he just absolutely loved torturing himself.

To the point that he was dredging up the reminders that he was such a failure in real life that even his subconscious acknowledges it, and created him a refuge to deal with that. Then, as if that was not enough, try to bring it into his real life.

The most insulting part? It had almost succeeded in making him believe that it was possible that in some universe somewhere in the omniverse, he was not such a screw-up with misfortune to match Hercules', dragging everyone he got close to into the inordinate, unfortunate mess that was his life.

But seriously? Turning the dream into a reality? Projecting some freaky science fiction magic thing here, in a world where science and logic dictates everything?

Nico was starting to question his sanity.

* * *

><p>*** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***<p> 


	4. Just One Day

_So, there were some flaws in the story, thanks to _**MarissaTodd** _for pointing that out! I worked an explanation into this chapter, I hope that it patches up the hole in the story logic. Drop a review when you're done, let me know what you thought about this chapter, please? _

**Disclaimers:** I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

**Warnings:** Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

**Summary:** For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it?

'Thoughts'  
>"Speech"<br>_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

><p><strong>Just One Day<strong>

Falling asleep was starting to feel more like a dream that was unattainable. Especially tonight.

It was debatable whether it was the pain or the mirror keeping him up, though. While the bruises made it impossible to find a comfortable position to settle and go to sleep in, the mirror kept his mind awake, eating up his sleepiness in giant bites. He was so sorely tempted to go and check the mirror in the bathroom and confirm that it was only a hallucination, but something held him back.

Maybe, just possibly, there was a little part of him that wanted the mirror to be actually a portal to another world. He read the Chronicles of Narnia when he was younger, and he would be lying if he said that he had not studiously and systematically checked every closet or wardrobe in every house he visited when he was ten. He grew out of it, but a part of him would always want to explore another world.

Turning over yet again, he sought out the cooler part of his bed.

It still hurts. Damn the redhead. The only reason Hazel had not seen right through him was the fact that she came back late again, and thus he could snuggle into his blankets and pretend to be asleep by the time she snuck into the room.

At least the raven… Jack? Mark? Jackie? Whatever his name was, he was never this brutal. He preferred to do the work himself, only setting the others on him if he fought back. That meant that as long as Nico did not retaliate, it would not get this bad, since the guy's stamina was not that great. Which… what happened to him? Now that he was thinking about it, Nico realised that he had not even seen the guy in the canteen for at least a week now. Maybe he had went overseas? That was not right either, he did not have much reason to do that, no family outside of this backwater town and no thirst for adventure, for roaming beyond.

Sometime while he was picking apart the possible theories behind the disappearance of the leader of the group of empty-headed idiots, he slipped into the realm of unconsciousness. He was jolted back into the land of the conscious suddenly and unceremoniously by the urgency, the need to use the toilet. He winced as he applied pressure on his foot, but he made it there as fast as he could and did his business.

He was washing his hands when he realized that there was no one in the mirror.

The tap continued running as he stared at the spot where he was supposed to be.

Everything in the mirror was exactly as it should be, except, with minor differences that stood out. For example, the curtains surrounding the shower stall was drawn, and there was a towel there that had not been put on the rack with the other towels since –

"Hey, Neeks, can I come in now?"

The voice hit him like a bullet, catching him completely off guard, knocking the wind out of him with the sheer familiarity of it. That was a voice he had never thought he would be able to hear again, something he had thought was completely gone, forever.

"A second!" someone called back.

That someone sounded so suspiciously like him.

That is, if he spoke with an Italian accent all the time.

The running water went forgotten as the shower curtains were drawn open. Nico was tempted to turn around and check that there was no one in the shower behind him.

Because, there was no way that was him. Him from an alternate universe or not.

Mirror-him was the right side of scrawny, not lean per se, but not too skinny either.

Unlike him. Leo had once approached him about the fact that he looked like he was starved at home, and he had not responded well. He had not too kindly told Leo that it was not his business, and that it was not within his control what his appearance was like. Suffice to say, they never broached the topic again.

Leo doesn't need to know that he had never quite gotten into the habit of eating regularly, as he had the tendency to forget that normal human beings needed three meals a day to function, so he would forget to eat if he did not keep track of when his last meal was.

Their eyes met in the mirror then, and his thoughts were derailed by his doppelganger speaking up.

"Nice to know that someone actually lives on that side of the mirror."

Nico startled a little when he realised that he was probably the guy in the mirror to the person in the mirror. Gods. That sounds… exactly like something out of a fairy-tale or science fiction or something?

The words came out of his mouth unchecked, though. "You're real?"

"I think that I should be asking that," the guy said.

The second on the clock reflected in the mirror on the other side ticked closer to 4:00. The single-worded question spilled out.

"How?"

His doppelganger stared back. He was apparently just as unsure.

He flickered off. The mirror showed Nico staring back at himself, heavy eye bags and half-stunned expression all there. Nico stumbled out of the bathroom.

4:00AM

He fell back into the bed in shock, wincing at the impact before his mind turned back to the meeting. Was it even a meeting? What was going on?

* * *

><p>The idea took hold in his head sometime before lunch. It stayed, persistently.<p>

It started as he wondered about the portal as the science teacher droned on about the laws of physics. Many of the theories proposed were never disproven, even if they were not proven. The one that stuck out was the one on mirrored universes. It had something to do with a black hole and the antimatter, but it spoke about how for everything that were around, there was a carbon copy in a mirrored universe, and there was a link between them.

It did not explain why the link would be in his bathroom, and neither did it explain just why… why Bianca was alive there where she should be dead, but it was an interesting theory, and it was one of those that mentioned portals, even if it was brief. It stated that for every parts of the worlds that touched, overlapped, a portal would be formed, establishing a connection that would allow things to pass through. Does that meant that Nico could get to that world?

When that question came up, Nico spaced out more. This time, he contemplated the possible scientific breakthroughs if he could find out how this worked. Then he could, perhaps, finally stop being such a disappointment. Maybe this was it? He could prove that it was possible to get to another world, another universe, and the whole realm of science would be redefined, wouldn't it?

Perhaps all the scientists would be left trying to reconcile this with everything they have right now. It's not that they'll mind, actually, if they really enjoyed experimenting and testing and exploring. This was just a whole new world of theories and possibilities that would likely be frustrating and almost impossible to manoeuvre, but it would not be completely impossible and it would be satisfying and fun.

Even better, what if the technology and scientific advances in that world was light years ahead of that in this world? They could make improvements in leaps and bounds, and the breakthrough would be extraordinary.

All this swirled around in his head as he wandered home that night. It was enough that he mostly did not notice the pain that laced through his systems whenever he applied too much pressure on his busted ankle. Hazel had walked home with him, but she had mostly given up on trying to get him to respond to her questions. She could recognise that when he was stuck in his head with theories or blueprints to be built, there was no point trying to ground him in reality.

This time, it was definitely anticipation keeping him up. After Hazel settled in for the night, he found himself unable to fall asleep. He had enough time to wrap his head around the fact that this was, possibly, a ground-breaking discovery that would change science as we know it, and now he was just bubbling with questions. Obviously, he would not be able to fit everything into the one or two minute session they had, but they could figure something out, right?

What had the boy tried to say, though? Was it important? The questions marched around in his head, demanding his full attention.

Eventually, Nico gave up on sleeping. There was other ways to pass time, after all.

Instead, he went and retrieved a book from the bookshelf and settled down in the living room, choosing to read just to give himself something to do other than lying there, staring at the stars as the glows faded, counting the seconds while his mind sped off at a million miles an hour wondering what could happen next.

He was not entirely sure of when, exactly had he fallen asleep, or what had woken him up when he re-entered the land of consciousness.

Glancing down, he noticed that the book was open on page 187.

Huh. He could barely recall having read to page 123. Or was it 23? He wasn't quite sure, he just knew that it was the part where the main character jumped onto a flag pole from a window in an office building after discovering that his uncle's car was riddled with bullet holes.

Closing it, he looked at the clock.

3:57AM.

He was a little surprised by the accuracy of his internal clock, although he supposes that he should have expected it. He had been waking up at the same time every night for seven months, after all, excluding the nights when he did not fall asleep at all, or woke up due to a nightmare.

Putting the book back, he walked towards the mirror in the bathroom. Pausing outside the bathroom door, he hovered a little, suddenly nervous. What if the previous two nights were not real? Or it was, indeed, 4:00 AM there, and his doppelganger was not awake? What if –

Shaking his head, he cleared the doubts. No point thinking about that now, it would just make him unnecessarily worried.

Steeling his nerves, he went in, and stared at the mirror.

Unlike before, this time, he was a little more prepared.

It was still slightly disorientating and disconcerting to watch as he suddenly warped a little, before being replaced by mirror-him. Apparently, he had been waiting for this too.

The words spilled out of his mouth unchecked once more. Somehow, he could not regret what he said this time, though. It felt like a brilliant idea now that he voiced it out.

"Want to switch?"

To his credit, the boy in the mirror only hesitated a little before he replied, "Are you the guy I keep thinking was me in my dreams? You've got an interesting life."

Which, of course, was totally not what he asked, but while it threw him off guard, it made him infinitely more curious.

"You dream too?"

"The only reason I was up the first time I noticed that there was no one on the other side of the mirror was because I woke up at 3:58 and tried to clear my head," mirror-him snorted.

Nico thought about it. "Yesterday and the day before?"

"Mom's not home. Someone has to drive Bianca back." He paused then. "So, are you?"

"If I am, than you probably was the guy I dreamt that I was for the past seven months, give or take." Nico scrambled for something to confirm that. "You date Percy, right?"

The reflection processed that before huffing out a laugh. "This whole conversation sounds so weird. Yes."

"So, you know what I'm mostly like, and, if you're fine with being me for one day, can we switch? Please?" Nico steered the conversation back to the original question.

"Why would you want to live my life?" He sounded puzzled.

"It's not really just your life, I want to see what the technology and the likes there are like, I mean, if we combined the theoretical and practical sciences we both have, we could –"

"Okay, fine, why not?"

Nico glanced up at the clock on the other side of the mirror. They had about 10 seconds left. "We should do this fast."

His reflection stared at him for about a second before clambering onto the counter. As he got closer to the mirror, and, indirectly, Nico, Nico found himself instinctively backing up a little. Goosebumps formed when the mirror rippled, the person who looked exactly like him _just coming out if it like…like…_

"If you're not regretting asking me to switch with you, do it quick. Not much time left."

Nico glanced at him, blanking out for a moment in panic. Before giving himself a chance to rethink his words, though, he got onto the countertop and pressed forward.

The first contact with the mirror jolted him a little. It was still a hard surface, but the touch seemed to make the mirror meld itself onto him, sucking him in, as if it was trying to pull him into it. From his position there, though, he could see mirror-him studying him. Their eyes met briefly in the mirror, and there was challenge in his eyes.

Nico ignored the sensation as he pushed right in.

For the short moment before he hit the other end of the portal, he was suspended, the feeling of free-falling making him nauseous. In there, the in-between, there was absolutely nothing, not even anything he could feel. The whole place was colourless, without any identifiable colour even without being all black.

Being on the other side slammed into him like a truck. He tumbled out of it, spat out by the same mirror that had taken him in, only, not on the right side, not anymore. His heart had begun beating a little faster, and he turned around. Before either of them could get more than a glimpse of each other, the mirror warped.

His hand collided with a hard surface when he touched the mirror, leaving behind a handprint.

The clock showed that it was now 4:00 AM.

Turning towards the half-opened door, he tried to sort out his feelings.

On one hand, he was excited. For the first time in forever, he would be seeing Bianca, talking to her again. Percy actually remembers, and acknowledges his existence, and his mother was still home. That was, if the person he switched with was, indeed, the guy he thought he was in his dreams, as put by him. That aside, the possibilities in this alternate universe was endless, if he could find one, maybe he could find the next one? And if the person on this side somehow created that portal, then he would find that material and figure out how it actually works.

On the other hand, though, this wasn't his world, Hazel wasn't here. It only truly occurred to him when he noticed that there was only two towels here – one for him, one for Bianca.

Not once, he realized, had he ever seen Hazel in his dreams.

It suddenly hit him that this was the life he would have led if Bianca had never died. If Hazel had never came into his life, if mother had never walked out of it. Well, you're here to search for the knowledge that this place could offer, not the life that you could have had.

'You could enjoy this chance,' something residing in the back of his mind whispered. 'You have to be him for a day, anyway. Might as well enjoy it while you could.'

That gave Nico pause. He would not be here just trying to pick up the answers to the questions that he had. It was a weekday, meaning that he would have to go to school. That meant that he would have to interact with other people as his doppelganger.

What was he supposed to do?

'Act.' His subconscious provided helpfully. 'Acting's one of the only things you're good at, right?'

He needed the script, though, to be good on the stage, he had to know what he was supposed to do, but this was not scripted. I'll try not to screw this up, Nico told himself silently. It's just for one day. I'm going to be him for one day. Oh hell, how am I going to not screw this up?

His hand was frozen on the doorknob. Nico was suddenly unable to summon the strength to push open the door and face this life now. 'I can't have stage fright for this. Even if it's not actually on a stage.'

Why did he ask to switch?!

It was done, though, and he could not regret it. Besides, the longer he wait, the harder it would be to bring himself to go out there. Semi-composing himself, he pushed open the door.

He paused with one foot out as he took in the room.

It was like he had walked back into his own room, just, with that weird feeling that something was off about it. Like there was something different, but not something he could spot at first glance.

Everything was just so _similar_. The same arrangement, the same furniture, the same wallpapers, the same bunks, even the same books on the bookshelf, at the first glance.

Then, he started picking up on the small differences, the little spot-the-differences that made him a little off-kilter as his brain tried to match this room to his. For instance, the pattern on the bed sheet on his bed was different, with cars on it instead of dinosaurs (don't ask), the glow-in-the dark dinosaurs that had replaced the stars that had hung there, the laptop on the table was open instead of close, with the colour being silver-grey with a red sticker on the top left hand corner of the screen instead of metallic-grey with a post-it note stuck onto the top right hand corner of the screen, the books on the shelf (which had been Hazel's) had either an entirely different syllabus, or the same syllabus for someone who was two grades higher, the missing box of hair products abandoned in the corner from the time when Hazel still hoped to be able to tame her hair, the pile of novels and magazines where Frank usually leaves his deck of Mythomagic cards from the times when he came over with the intentions of playing with Nico –

It was a slap in the face when he realized that he was so used to having Hazel around he had moved on from Bianca. Had stopped thinking about her in present tense, thinking more about Hazel instead. Stopped seeing her every time he came back to his room, expecting to see Hazel, or possibly Hazel and Frank, or even his friends, instead.

How could he have just forgotten her like that?

The soft rhythm of snores filled the still air in the room as Bianca slept on peacefully, completely and perfectly unaware of what had just happened.

Just one day, he told himself firmly as he walked over to the bed that looked so much like his own, yet so different and definitely not his. From here, standing beside the bed, he only needed to tilt his head up a little to see Bianca, sleeping there. Guilt washed over him as he found himself tracing the lines of her, trying to remember everything he could.

That was when he spotted the something lining her right arm. In the dim lighting, it was almost indistinguishable, but that tattoo like thing definitely was not supposed to be there. Was it?

Gods, if everything was going to be this…_off_, this different, all the time, then it was going to be really hard for him to predict his moves and what he should say, but he was always good at improvising. Now that he was actually here, he could appreciate just how little he knew about the life of the person he lived at in his dreams. Sure, he got glimpses all the time, but they were just that – a glimpse that offered no real insight.

Exhaling, he looked at the bed once more. Suddenly, he felt exhausted. Without much complaint, he got into the bed and tried to get comfortable. It did not really matter, since he ended up falling asleep almost as soon as he laid down.

* * *

><p>He woke to the semi-familiar voice telling him that he was going to be late if he did not get up instantly. He groaned, turning over and burying his head under the pillow as he mumbled for H-<p>

The unfamiliar fragrance of another sort of detergent cut sharply through the haze of sleepy disorientation, making him alert, cutting him off before he could say Hazel's name as he registered and tried to place the scent.

Suddenly, he was wide awake and fully aware of what was going on.

He forced himself to finish up the sentence, though, mindful to use Bianca's name instead.

She sounded annoyed as she told him that he was usually better than this in the morning. He rolled over and got his first look at her, a proper look in actual person, instead of glimpses through Other Nico's eyes, or the previous night from the lower angle.

His eyes were instantly drawn to the row of 0's followed by a 1, separated by colons, printed on her right arm. It looked suspiciously like a counter, or a timer.

Only, there was 8 slots, way more slots beyond the usual seconds, minutes and hours, or even if the person used milliseconds.

He had never seen this in his dreams.

Then again, he hadn't paid much attention to details.

Still.

He must have stared for a little longer than he intended, for Bianca made another impatient sound and told him that he had a counter of his own, if he was so interested in it, he should look at his own instead.

Nico flushed a little, before apologizing for it.

She gave him a funny look, a hint of suspicion clear in her eyes. "Come on, you're up now. Get changed, we need to go. Or I'll just go without you," she stated clearly before waltzing out of the door.

Barely the start of the day and I'm already screwing it up, Nico thought as he pulled out the outfit mirror-him had been kind enough to leave hanging in the closet. Just like what I had expected. He changed quickly, the skill perfected after almost years of almost being late for school due to the lack of an alarm clock that could actually wake him up.

He was almost out of the door when he glanced down at the glaring lack of a counter on his arm.

Going back to the closet, he rifled through it for a jacket that he liked. Pulling it on, he picked up the bag left to the side of the table before running down the stairs and out of the house to catch up with Bianca.

She was in a car when he got there.

A Rolls-Royce that he probably wouldn't even have gotten to touch back home.

He refused to be thrown off by that, although he knew that father never had a car. Of course, it was a little harder to stopper his reaction when he realized that his mother was the one driving.

His glimpses of his life in his dreams was limited to snatches of his life in school, so he had never gotten to see his mother. No matter the fact that she had always preferred Bianca, she had never treated him badly. Even though he never said it out loud, Nico had missed having her around. Maria had aged gracefully, maintaining her regal air of authority. She caught his eyes in the rear view mirror and smiled at him. Thankfully, she looked back to the road before she could see his reaction.

Bianca simply ignored him, glaring out of the window. That did not sit right with him. From what he had seen in his dreams, the two of them got on quite well. Sure, they had not sat together during lunch break for a while now, but nothing had ever indicated that Bianca did not like him. What went wrong?

It occurred to Nico that it was entirely possible that the dreams were not connected to this world.

That made more sense, actually. Not that it would matter. He was here on a scientific journey. Besides, no matter how bad things might be here, it could not be as bad as life in reality.

And if it was, well.

It's just one day.

Wasn't it?

* * *

><p>*** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***<p> 


	5. Going Through With It

_This chapter is really a filler. It's mainly to provide you with more information on this world, and how I envision it would work. I hope it does things well enough that the thoughts don't look too out of place. Read and Review!_

**Disclaimers:** I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

**Warnings:** Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

**Summary:** For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it?

'Thoughts'  
>"Speech"<br>_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

><p><strong>Going Through With It<strong>

School was… enlightening.

After they had gotten out of the car, Bianca walked off without a word, leaving Nico staring after her. He then looked down at the timetable used as a bookmark in the book his doppelganger had been reading. Most of the subjects were different.

After the first couple of classes, he came to the conclusion that the person he was in this world was really, really smart. And had accelerated in his classes.

It was either that, or the syllabus here was simply vastly different with varied difficulty level across the subjects.

Most of the things taught here was harder than back at home, although it could just be that everything was not the same at all

During the science lessons, instead of standard pure Biology, Chemistry and Physics, like the ones he took back at home, they had weird topics like time science, biochemical electricity, mechanical science and aerodynamic fluxations, physiology and possible origins and defences of the MaiVisto (he really need to start reading up to figure out what that was, since it popped up quite a few times, even once in a discussion about military school). They also had compulsory self-defence lessons. Which, hey, was good and all that, except, they were taught to use guns, or make-shift ray gun-like things, during the lessons.

Even for lessons that should have remained the same, there was differences too. For instance, in literature, they had an entire set of readings – books that were a semi-alternate version of the classics they were required to buy in the school book list back home. Then, in history, they don't have anything about the world wars and civil wars, or even the different presidents (or their equivalents of that), instead, it was about the founding of the Colonies, the theoretical existence of the Rosetta Colony (it reminded Nico of the theory behind the lost city of Atlantis), different political parties that once reigned and the Colony disagreements, etcetera. All in all, it left Nico completely lost. Bamboozled. Flummoxed. Because, yes. They were encouraged to use those words during English class here.

It gave Nico a sudden and hard-to-reign-in urge to start wiping the place down. That urge only increased as he opened the locker and found it in a complete mess. Seriously, doesn't his doppelganger know better than to haphazardly stuff everything into the locker without arranging them properly, or shelving them? Or even just stacking them neatly, aligning them against the wall.

He needed to find the notes, though. Wincing a little, he started going through the pile of _junk_. That was when Percy rested a hand on Nico's shoulder. Nico stilled at the contact, trying to figure out just how Percy managed to creep up on him. He was usually more alert than this.

Automatically, he had stiffened, and Percy noticed. His response was to squeeze Nico's shoulder gently. Nico forced himself to relax so as not to rouse more suspicion. After he relaxed, it was not entirely too hard to allow himself to melt into the contact.

He did not react when Percy kissed him on the neck softly and muttered, "Kitten."

The bell saved him by ringing, signalling the start of the next lesson. Percy detached himself from Nico, wandering off to his next class, leaving behind a smile and butterflies in his stomach.

Nico shook it off. Scientific journey. Research material. 'Concentrate on that,' he told himself firmly. 'It's only one day. Make the best of it, find out as much as possible.'

It was a tough thing to do, keeping his distance, given that Percy had the habit of waiting for him during lunch period. They sat in the corner of the school, away from the field and everyone else, and Percy rolled his sleeves up.

It occurred to Nico, then, just what it was about this place that made everything even more…different.

Unlike back home, where most people wore revealing clothes (especially the girls, not that he was pointing fingers), here, everyone wore jackets. Long pants, long sleeves. They wore almost the same clothes, too, off the conveyer belt. It was all so… _uniformed_.

The other thing he realised was that every single person he passed, even the teachers, had the same 'tattoo' (he still did not know exactly what it was). He came to the conclusion that it must signify something, even if the teachers had different digits, whereas all the students only had 0's.

And, alright. That was weird, but it could just be a custom? Or, a school thing. Until, of course, he was walking home with Bianca and saw that little kid, who might be five, and his younger sister, who was still in the pram, and realised that both of them had that 'tattoo' to.

The most disturbing thing, though, was the fact that no one here looked to be over the age of twenty-five. What happened to those who were older? Were they shifted to another region? Except, when the parents came to pick up their children, there were none above twenty five, even if their child was his age. Perhaps older.

Now that he thought of it, their mother did not look to be older than twenty five either.

Do they just stop aging when they hit twenty five? But how?

He needed to get to the library. It was always well stocked, there would certainly be enough information there. After school, he walked home with Bianca, who had waited for him. She spent the whole trip talking to Connor, though, pointedly ignoring Nico. It left Nico wondering exactly what the dynamics between the siblings really was. Didn't mirror-Nico say that he was up at 4:00 in the morning as he had just driven Bianca and Percy to the club and back, never mind that he was not yet sixteen?

So, why was she pretending that he did not exist?

When Connor walked off, she promptly informed him that she had something to attend to, some club that required her attendance, and that, since their mother was busy today, he was free to do anything he wanted to do. Without so much a glance backwards, she stalked off down the road opposite the one Connor took, leaving Nico a little confused. Was it something he had done?

It worked for him, though. He visited the library as he had originally planned to. Just, this time, his goal was not just the science of this world, how it works. He was going to look up on the part that he had clearly missed. The reason why mirror-him was so eager to switch places with him. Normal people would not agree to such a suggestion so easily, after all.

The winding path leading up to the building door not fully paved, and it was worn not by use, but by neglect. The patches of cobble stones here and there clearly had not been replaced for a very long time. The building itself was older, too, with no evidence of attempts at maintenance, or even renovation and repainting. It felt so much more… isolated. Deserted.

It was pretty obvious that it had not been visited by people for a while.

Nico hoped that it had not been abandoned too long ago.

The door swung open easily, revealing an empty hall. It was dusty and the feeling made him uneasy. Nico entertained the notion of leaving, but he dismissed it soon. He was already here, and the books were still here even if the people weren't.

There was a small corner besides the librarian's counter, the place where the history books used to be placed in. He hoped that they did not change the arrangement of books – he really didn't want to search through the whole place in search of the history section.

When he did, eventually, leave the library, it was with a ton of apprehension and a newfound paranoia. A heightened sense of having eyes trained on him. It left him with a constant need to look over his shoulder every now and then to check that there was no one there, despite the fact that it was made clear by the books that none of the aliens (named by the people of Earth the MaiVisto) could possibly enter colony.

It was made equally clear that no one could see the aliens, though, which was why they were named what they were in the first place.

The books and the reports spoke of the stars that fell from the sky and wrought devastation on the major cities on the day of the invasion, how they destroyed humankind and almost all other living things, except for the plants. There were some pictures of the cities right after the invasion – lifeless and empty.

Still.

Dead.

As always, of course, there was that handful of survivors who figured out how to hide from something you could not see. They found a way to communicate with other patches of survivors around the world, spreading the message on some of the weaknesses and trying to fight back with makeshift weapons.

This little groups formed their own communities in their stronghold, creating places the MaiVisto could neither touch nor see – the tourists who had been in Moscow built a cage the kept the aliens out, some of the scientists on an expedition built a small, floating 'island' fort in the middle of the oceans close to the Antarctic, whereas some people in Venice built themselves a wall of glass surrounding the city, half in the water and half out of it. This places expanded as more survivors arrived, expanding to become cities, which eventually connected and became the first three colonies – Tartarus, Atlanta and Olympia.

There was a falling out of sorts between the colonies, though, but there was no real records. Those that did record the event had their own versions of what had happened, but all agreed that Tartarus was destroyed, leaving behind only ruins of a once flourishing colony.

Recently, however, the existence of the Tartarus Colony was erased from history books, as, on top of the fact that there was no official records of such a colony having been around, there was no one with families who had actually came from there. There was no artefacts that could have originated from Tartarus either, meaning that those few sources that listed Tartarus as a colony was gone, and there only were two founding colonies left in documented history.

It became a ghost city, an urban legend lumped together with the Amazons, an outlaw group that had abandoned the Colonies because they did not agree with the ideal, or something like that.

He'd been forced to stop there, as the sun had went down and he was probably expected back home. His mind was now filled with conspiracy theories though.

There had been something off about this place, he knew, but now that he knew, he just could not wait to get back home. To his own reality. No matter how bad real life was, at least it was safer than this place could ever be. It can't compare.

As he prepared for bed, he knew instantly that he must be doing something wrong. Bianca kept staring at him, although she said absolutely nothing. It did not matter to him, though, he wanted to get back home. He would not have to deal with this tomorrow, anyway.

Of course, he fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion and overload of information the moment he fell into bed. His internal alarm clock woke him up at 3:57, thankfully.

Instantly, he was more energised, and he shoved the covers back eagerly, getting into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.

It felt like an eternity had passed before the mirror surface rippled.

The relief was short-lived.

Instead of the mirror-him, or even just the bathroom, he found himself staring at a blank, grey wall that stretched across the entire span of the mirror.

A ball of panic inevitably rose in him, knotting him into an anxious almost-mess. He kept his composure as he placed his palm against the mirror, pushing gently and watching as it sank into the quicksilver surface. Perhaps this was just an error, and he could still get back.


	6. Stranded

_Let's just say that Nico's not going to be happy about what's happening to him here. Of course, he's doing a good job, retaining a sense of normalcy, but he'll crack under the stress soon, and it's not going to be pretty. Not now, though. I'm not that mean._

_On a side note, I'm now working on the sequel, Rosetta 51. _

_Leave a review when you're done with this chapter!_

**Disclaimers:** I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

**Warnings:** Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

**Summary:** For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it?

'Thoughts'  
>"Speech"<br>_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

><p><strong>Stranded<strong>

Instead of going straight through, he encountered a wall, or a solid. Whatever it was, he couldn't pass through it. Pushing at it did not help – it adamantly refused to budge.

He pulled his hand back out and stared in semi-horror at the grey expanse. There was a part of him that was fascinated by the discovery that it was possible to either half-seal, or block, a formed portal. It even managed to temporarily override the horrific discovery that he was possibly stuck here for good now, unless he could unblock this thing. 'Thank you, scientific curiosity,' he thought sarcastically.

Before he could try again, though, the mirror sort of shivered. The wall rippled, vanishing to show a reflection of the bathroom on his side once more. He was left standing, gaping at the mirror with the realisation that he would have to be someone else for at least another day sinking in.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to convince himself that this could just be a glitch. Even if this was not just a crappy game. Maybe tomorrow, the wall would be gone. Besides, this gives him more time to find out more, doesn't it?

He found that he could not bring himself to be excited, though. He wanted out of this. He hadn't thought this decision through when he first spoke up, and look where it landed him.

He spent the second day contemplating the things that could possibly have caused the blockage, and what he could do about it. Directly after school, he made a beeline for the library. This time, instead of reading up about this world, he started inhaling books on portals, alternate universes and parallel worlds.

Much to his dismay, most of the materials here was not that much different from the information he had discovered in his little session with Leo.

Speaking of Leo…

'He's going to have a field day with this,' Nico thought dryly, imagining Leo's reaction if he was the one here instead of Nico. 'Alternate Universes indeed.'

If there was only one person more excited about science and technology, it would be Leo.

Back to his books.

By the end of the relatively unproductive session, the only new information he gleaned was that while the majority of it was theories about portals, most of it was proposed theories. Nothing was proven. Apparently, most of the people here did not believe that a portal to a parallel world was possible, either. What happened was probably a natural phenomenon, one that just happened to connect him and his doppelganger. Something that he had no way of figuring out how to duplicate.

Something might never happen again.

Shoving that pessimistic thought away, he sat down on the covered toilet seat and waited. When the portal did, eventually came back, he utterly refused to be deterred by the grey, solid surface that just proved to be not just a glitch.

Not wasting any time, he started searching for an edge, for some place to use as a leverage and push the blockage away, or just to secure a way around this thing. All four sides stretched on, though, beyond his reach.

When it ended, he blinked at it. Narrowing his eyes, Nico tried to glare the mirror back into being a portal. Obviously, it did not work. Nico stamped out the bit of panic that swelled up at the thought of acting for another day. The urge to start dusting off the counter was not so easily pushed aside, though.

Nico ended up stalking back to his bed to escape from the toilet – the mirror and the dust on the counter. He could not fall asleep, though. His mind refused to shut down. It was as he stared at the closed door to the toilet that he dimly recalled something he had read in one of the books during the session with Leo.

It had stated that for every connection established between the worlds, a balance would be struck. Should items be exchanged, the balance might be upset and it could seal itself off if un-stabilised.

If the portal had, indeed, been sealed, though, wouldn't the connection have been severed? Then, there would be no reason for the portal to even appear at all. There was a flaw in the logic, one that Nico clung to. He had to have something to work with, after all.

He'll fix that problem, the glitch, whatever it was that made the grey expanse appear.

If everything failed, he would just find another way to get back. He won't get disheartened by the discovery that it was most likely impossible to make his own portal back home.

He refused to be stuck here forever.

He semi-drifted through his third day. This was when he found the second biggest reason he would not be able to stand living here – all the people who were his friends in his own reality hated him here. At least, Rachel and Reyna does. Jason, apparently, did not quite notice him, as he was too focused on Bianca, while Leo just did not know he existed, period.

Which.

Even back home, when the world largely ignored him, he had, at least, the four of them. Them, a couple of people associated with them, and Hazel. Hazel.

Hazel, who, like Jason, did not quite realise he existed.

That hurt a lot more than he would have thought, but maybe that was just because he could not stop seeing her as the sister who had picked him up from the all-time low of his life. Something he might revisit soon, if he wasn't given a break from this 'pretending to be someone else until he could get home' show.

As Rachel laughed at him for getting his answers wrong during literature, he gritted his teeth mentally and just stared down at his book, wondering what went wrong with him in this world. Staring unseeingly at his book, he noticed that there was a few faded smudges in between the lines for the first eight lines. He frowned a little, reaching for an eraser to clean up the book when a shadow fell over him.

Looking up, he realised that it was Rachel.

She smiled at him a little smugly. "Finally decided to stop being such a stick in the mud and start being a rebel? Or is it because you simply can no longer keep up with your work? Poor thing, if that's the case. I wonder what your mother would think when she finds out that you would no longer have a perfect score."

Without waiting for a response, she simply stalked off.

Nico's hand was frozen on the way to the pencil case as he stared after her. He saw, in his peripheral vision, that the students from the next class were streaming in and some of his classmates were staring at him, but he simply could not be bothered by them.

What did he do wrong? What the hell did he do to make her despise him so much?

The Rachel he knew never taunted anyone. The only people she mocked were bullies who tried to belittle her, or anyone else. He drew a blank when he tried to remember an incident in which she deliberately sought someone out to jeer at them. No matter what, she was not a mean person by nature. What happened here?

Was it just him? He had always known that she was someone you wanted on your side, but never once had he considered the possibility of her being anything other than a friend. Was this what she was like to people she considered her…

Enemies?

As he tried to comprehend this, a hand slammed down on the table, jolting him upright.

"Hey, day dreamer, get the hell out of this seat. It's my seat now."

Nico glared up at the newcomer once he got his wits back. He did sweep his belongings into his bag, though. He did not want to be late for his next class, after all.

He was starting to hate this place.

As he stared at the mirror for the fourth time in a row, from this side of the mirror, he could not fight the frustration anymore. He had tried every method he could find, all the way up to using hammers and other tools.

Of course, nothing worked.

Any damage done simply merged back after he pulled away, or even just drag his tools to the left or the right. When his time was close to running out, he stayed put. Of course, he was expelled from the mirror before it returned to being a perfectly innocent mirror.

It spat him out, though.

Thankfully, it only threw him off a little. Nico glared at the mirror. Why wouldn't anything work?

The fourth afternoon, he came back from the library with a load of theories and tools he could build to get through the block. His current working theory is that although the block was like quicksilver, or corn-starch, if he were to drive an object straight through it with enough force, it might leave a gap.

Of course, he knew that there was a very high chance that it would not work, and, as it turned out, it most definitely did not work. The nail sunk into the mirror and simply did not return. As he had not hammered it through, it must have been absorbed by the substance.

By the fifth day, though, he discovered that he had exhausted the resources available. He continued his hunt, though, looking for other ways to achieve a breakthrough. That night, when he got home, Bianca cornered him.

Nico had figured that, for whatever reason, Bianca disliked him in this world. For her to confront him about his behaviour while looking this worried, there must be something he was doing really, really wrong. Not really understanding, he played along, making a mental note to start paying more attention to how he behaved in public. In the past few days, it must have slipped his mind that he was supposed to be someone else here.

He reassured her that he was fine, silently promising himself that he would get back home, and mirror-him could deal with this. He felt like he was being really mean, for a moment, before he decided that there would probably be a mess back home for him to clean up, too, so this was only fair.

Trying to drive the metre-long shoe-rack leg through did not work that night. It met with resistance no matter how far he pushed, and he had to stop when there was only a little bit left, less he risk it being swallowed up like the nail had been, previously. Yanking it back out, he watched silently as the mirror returned to being the stubbornly normal thing it was supposed to be. Nico then got to work fixing the leg back to the rack.

The next day, he read up on magic.

Yes, he was that desperate.

There was nothing more for it, was there? Might as well go all out. At least then he could say that he had tried.

Nothing in the books worked. He had nit-picked at them previously, of course, but he had to try, right? So he had taken those that looked the most possible. The only thing he got out of that night was the fact that magic, apparently, does not exist in this world either.

Even if aliens and other things that are only possible in science fiction does.

Nico was suddenly struck by the thought: What if they do exist in his world, just, in the near future and not in the past?

It pushed him to redouble his efforts. There was nothing much he could do anymore, though.

He tried, every night, with various objects and other Wiccan stuff that he could get his hands on, but he eventually exhausted all his avenues. Staying up every night was taking its toll, too, and even the teachers were worried.

Apparently, he was a straight A's student here.

Figures.

Balancing schoolwork and life with this…side project was tough, and he knew that he was running out of steam. Everything did not quite match his own memories and expectations, and it left him reeling most of the time. It's not that he hated this world, he's just sick and tired of the expectations this place have of him and the roles people expect him to play, damn it, he wasn't their perfect boy, he was the broken one from another world that made a mistake in asking to switch places, he can't do this.

He just wanted to go home and be done with this.

Curl up in a blanket and forget about the world for a while.

To top it off, Percy kept being so nice to him. It made him so guilty, because it wasn't him. The person Percy liked was his doppelganger, not the replacement, and Percy didn't know. It felt like he was forcing Percy to cheat on his look-a-like with him, and that went against his morals. Ignoring Percy got him the kicked puppy look, and it made him feel even worse than he already did. Percy wasn't supposed to be involved.

Nico admitted defeat by night number twelve.

If he wanted out, he'll have to either work on an alternate path, or search for another portal that just happens to link their worlds. The odds are slim, but well. He needed something to work towards.

Otherwise he would really succumb to the temptation of just coming clean and then running for it. Even if there was nowhere for him to run to, in a world that is populated by invisible monsters. Aliens.

Whatever.

If he wanted people to back off and let him search in peace, though, he would have to convince them that he was fine right now, and nothing was wrong.

Wouldn't that just be such a walk in the park?

Sleep deprivation was not helping in his cognitive functions though. He'll come up with something when he was done sleeping. Speaking of which, it was Monday.

Again.

He wanted to groan at the thought that he only had a few hours to try and catch some sleep, as Bianca always insisted on waking him up early. He did not really want to go to school either.

Back on his bed – it was his now, since mirror-him was not around, he tried to sleep.

Of course, he failed miserably at it, just like he did at everything else he had tried to do recently, including schoolwork.

Letting out a whine, he rolled over, opening his eyes, ignoring the blurriness as he glared at the bunk bed above. Even sleep was too much to ask for now?!

Sure, why not, his brain replied. After everything that's already wrong with this world, it's being unable to sleep that you're complaining about. Why not just go ahead and list everything that went wrong about this place from day one to day twelve and onwards.

Maybe he really was that out of it. Whatever the reason was, he actually started making list.

Firstly, there's no Google here. There's not even an internet, and, while Nico was not one of those addicts, when he had no idea what to do about something, he usually starts with Google. Or a search engine. Then, of course, he moves on to read up more. But, here, there's no such thing as the internet, there's no such thing as a smartphone, an iPhone or an s3, no such thing as a wireless network.

Secondly, everybody hates him. Even his sister. His best friends and his half-sister and everyone at school. Even if he was good at schoolwork, nobody likes him. And now that he's not good at schoolwork anymore, even the teachers, who basically tolerates him, wouldn't like him either. The hell is wrong with him here? Why? Well, Percy likes him, but he's the only one. Even Annabeth despises him.

And this world.

It's something straight out of a dystopian story. Having figured out that the row of digits must be significant in some way, Nico had read up on it. And he almost puked at what he found out.

Using time as a currency? He would applaud the genius who thought that it would be a good idea to make "Time is money" a literal thing, except he really could not imagine such a world as being one anyone would want to live in. They don't even have a choice about living this way, it's either accept what they had or go out and face invisible things on their own. Revolts were not possible either, shut down the timer and you're dead. Why would anyone initially subject themselves to this?

This place is like a horror story version of the 1900's, set in the future, with way more science and aliens and way less technology.

It's backwards, that's what it was.

No wonder his doppelganger switched it up with him.

No matter how much he hated it here, though, he would have to learn to deal with it. It's going to be reality for him, after all. Until he got some way to get back.

He has no intentions of spending the rest of his life here.

To navigate this place, he would have to figure out how this world really works. Aside from the row of digits, he would have to relearn history and rewire his brain to think the way he was expected to think in this world, if he wanted people to not be suspicious of his behaviour. He had kind of screwed that up, he just hope that it's not too late to make a change.

4:37.

His mind drifted to Hazel, wondering how she was faring in school now. Hazily, he realised that he had never once wondered just how Bianca was doing when it came to schoolwork. He would apologize about thinking of Hazel whenever he thought about his sister, especially in this world, since Hazel most definitely wasn't his sister here, but he found that it was harder for him to accept that now.

Hazel was the one who had cared, after all.

Bianca had always just been a dream.

This was a chance to live with her, though. No matter how much she seemed to dislike him, in general, he was going to try and make amends for whatever he had done in this world. Whether or not she would understand. He was not about to let this be something he would regret in the future.

This was his foreseeable future, anyway.

He'll just make the best he could of it.


	7. Being Him

_So, I skipped a week last week because of life, which is why I'll try to get chapters 8 & 9 up by next Sunday, alright? There's major overhaul to the story in general, too, but it should not affect the rate I'll update that much. Leave a review after reading!_

**Disclaimers:** I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

**Warnings:** Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

**Summary:** For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it?

'Thoughts'  
>"Speech"<br>_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

><p><strong>Being Him<strong>

_"__Hey, Nico, are you sure you're fine?" Leo asked, looking really concerned. Nico did not reply. "Hello? Earth to Nico?" He wind milled his hands around, in front of Nico, trying to get his attention. Nico looked at him, giving him a faint smile, his mind clearly somewhere else._

_Leo frowned._

_"__Really, Nico. Are you sure there's nothing wrong back home?"_

_His hand on Nico's shoulder did the trick. Nico snapped back into focus, seemingly having registered, finally, that there was someone quite desperately trying to hold a conversation with him._

_"__I, yeah. There's nothing wrong back home."_

_Leo considered his words. Apparently, coupled with a tentative grin, it was enough to convince him, and he let himself be led away to another topic easily, seeming to have forgotten about this particular conversation._

_It felt a little too fake, a little too forced, to Nico, but then again, so does everything, so maybe it was real? Whatever it was, he wanted…_

Trying to be him was wearing Nico out.

Being shaken awake earlier than usual… well, it took a while, but he finally got the hang of it, so it's alright. At least this time round, he could actually fall back asleep after being woken because of the dreams. It's dealing with the day to day life that was draining his energy.

It starts with not being allowed to sleep in a little, because apparently his doppelganger was a morning person, and, Bianca, not knowing any better, expected the same from him. It continues in him sometimes seeing something he knew that Leo would find amusing, turning around, about to point that out, just to realise that Leo wasn't there. That Leo probably does not even know that he existed. The same applies for Reyna, Rachel, Jason, even Frank and Hazel. There was no one there, at least, no one that actually mattered was ever around.

Then there was school. There was convoluted science that was so convoluted it was almost nonsensical, especially to someone who grew up with a different set of scientific laws and theories and a firm belief that something substantial with organs and all that is made out of light and is impossible to see is, theoretically, impossible, and then, there was literature.

Basically, all the classics. The books he had read so many times he had basically memorized everything there was line by line, so the minor differences were minute enough that they sometimes slip by unnoticed, resulting in slip-ups in his answers as the professor started picking on him to answer.

Discounting that, there was the people. Rachel, who never fails to miss a chance to pick out flaws in arguments he presented, and Reyna, who always gives him the coldest, hardest glare she could muster, one he had never thought he would be on the receiving end of, whenever he got something right, or if he so much as brushed past her.

The icing on this perfectly baked disaster was Percy. Everything came back to Percy, doesn't it? This whole expedition started because he wanted a way out. Wanted a chance, to see what another world would be like, so he could forget about how much of a disappointment he was, to his father, to Hazel, to his friends, to Percy. Then, now, Percy wouldn't leave him alone.

Which, if he were back at home, he would be perfectly fine with. Except, this wasn't real. The guy Percy wanted wasn't him, and it just wasn't fair. This felt too similar to what Percy had done to him, except it's actually worse, because he understands what it's like to find out that someone's been cheating on you, and he couldn't even dissuade Percy from staying around him, because to do that would be to ruin the relationship for his doppelganger,

When did his life become such a dramatic mess? Nico wondered in despair.

Surprisingly, though, no one ever saw anything wrong with him. It helps, of course, that aside from Percy and Bianca, no one actually spoke to him, with the exception of maybe Travis and Connor. Although it stung a little to realise that he was just as invisible here as he was back home, if not more so, he was silently glad for how much easier it made everything.

Of course, it would make sense that things would get shot to hell on a Wednesday, because Mondays were too cliché and Friday would be too merciful. No, best let it be in the middle of the weekdays, so you would still have to deal with school.

It was English.

The afternoon was hot, and the heat weighed down on him rather heavily. The lesson itself was not interesting, and Nico was on the brink of falling asleep, the strain of cramming knowledge he should have accumulated over the past fourteen years in a week's worth of time making itself known.

_"__Nico?" Hazel asked. He looked up at her in response. _

_"__Yes?"_

_"__You've been rather… different lately. Is there anything going on that I could help with?"_

_Nico stared at her. It made sense that she latched on, but it was still jarring to find that someone here actually cared for him. That aside, he had no idea what to say. He stuck to the standard, "I'm fine."_

_She frowned a little, not entirely convinced, but not outright pushing either. Pursing her lips a little, she muttered, "I'm here for you, alright? If you need any…_

There was more to it, before and after, but that was really all Nico could remember as he stared up at his teacher, a little dazed at being dragged out of a dream so abruptly. Then, he almost winced when he saw how annoyed she looked, and how… he almost frowned.

Behind the teacher, Rachel wasn't smirking smugly at him this time. Instead, she seemed a little… suspicious?

He was forced to look back at the teacher, though, knowing that it wouldn't do to be caught staring at her. The lecture he was expecting did not come. Instead, she simply told him to stay behind after class.

Nico did.

The lecture, when it was delivered, was laced with concern and worry, though. The teacher was constantly asking if there was something wrong, telling him that if he needed help, they would always be there, and that his friends would be supportive too. That, if he needed someone to talk to about something, she was willing to listen, that there was nothing wrong with needing a little help at all.

Nico almost snapped at that, the urge to rant getting increasingly harder to resist. Yes, there was something wrong, there was something very, very, very wrong about this whole situation but there was no way he could ask for help for this, never mind the fact that there was no way they could help much anyway. Yes, he knew that his friends would be supportive, but they're not in this world, and really, he did not need to worry about a meddling teacher on top of everything he already have to deal with.

She had good intentions, though, and he had to begrudge her that. So, swallowing down his ire, he smiled at her and told her that everything was alright, he just hadn't been able to sleep for a while, that's all.

To her credit, she did not push for reasons, simply accepting his explanation. She sent him off after reiterating the fact that he was welcome in her office.

Nico had no intentions of ever going back there.

With the exception of that, the day ended much the same way the previous few did.

She must have spoken to his mother, though, since she started fussing the moment Nico stepped into the house. It would have been nice, if it had not put him under the spotlight. Even Bianca, who ignored him when she could, asked him if he was sick and needed to take a break from school. While he was monumentally tempted to say yes, if he did not show up in school, he would be drawing attention to himself. He couldn't handle the attention while trying to blend in. Fading into the background, unnoticed, is kind of hard to do while everyone is staring at you after all.

So, he said no.

She left him alone after that, although Nico could tell that she had not forgotten about their conversation.

The next few days went by as usual, with Rachel paying him more attention now. Instead of waiting for Literature to taunt him, she actually made an effort to locate him during breaks. Of course, she also put in effort to make sure he did not notice her hanging around, but she was not entirely inconspicuous when she was spying on him.

Nico doubled up on his reading, driven by the determination to understand everything he should have already known, if only to maintain his image here and divert the concern that would likely evolve into suspicion.

The daily 'preview' did not cease, too, and while it meant that he could at least keep an eye on his doppelganger's progress, it also made him homesick. He wanted to get back there.

Double the amount of studying and observing, as well as keeping up appearances, coupled with the general crap known as 'being him', the pressure was mounting and it was getting to him. Reining in his OCD was a monumental task, and if he does not find some way to release the pent up stress, he would crack under the pressure.

His solution? Take it all out on the library, since he couldn't do what he wanted at home.

Digging out the bucket from the closet, he went to the closest stream and dragged the bucket of water to the library and spent half of each afternoon scrubbing out the dirt and dust that had accumulated.

He dedicated at least half of each library session to the cleaning therapy.

It seems to have worked, since Bianca went back to ignoring him completely, and Rachel stopped following him around as much.

He was still really relieved when the weekends arrived, though. Bianca was busy this time, with a sleepover and a party, and their mother was visiting the Athens Colony to meet up with some other scientists during the conference to share ideas, before having her designs validated. If he was not wrong, she would be going on an expedition beyond the Colony walls with a group of people (there was a name for the organization they worked for, but Nico could not remember it for the life of him).

Of course, while he did not exactly approve of it, he could understand why it was necessary, since she was a scientist who made designs of weapons to be used against the aliens.

It also meant that he was finally alone, too, and he could really use the time to try and sort everything out.

He made the mistake of letting down his guard.

Therefore, when he entered the room, mostly focused on keeping the hot chocolate from spilling before he could set it on the table, he was not prepared for someone to just slam him against the recently-closed door and having him pinned by the throat.

The scalding drink splashed down his front as he dropped the mug in shock. 'Great,' he thought. 'Bruises and burns to make up for the faded bruises.' When he registered the identity of his assailant, though, the mug shattering on the floor went unnoticed, together with the pain from the burn left behind by the hot chocolate.

"You're not Nico. Who are you?"

The bright, blue eyes were filled with distrust.

Subconsciously, of course, he had expected to be confronted at some point of time. Perhaps about who he really was, or about what he was doing here. It was a matter of fact that no matter how good he was at acting, someone would eventually see through it. Even if he had constructed all his emotions properly, reacting as expected based off what little knowledge he had of his doppelganger and crafted his words carefully, he knew that all it takes was one wrong move to crumble the shaky foundations his lies were built on.

On top of that, he had not actually been doing a good job, anyway, most of the people who knew him had thought that there was something wrong, so Nico had just been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It's only that, out of everyone he had considered would find out who he was, first, Jason never made it to the list.

It wasn't even because Jason was unnoticeable, or that he thought Jason was unobservant.

It's just, well, Jason was one of his only friends in his reality – or, the one he had before this. He had never once thought that Jason would be suspicious of him, or that Jason would distrust him, even if that Jason was from another universe, in a technical sense.

The shock removed his brain to mouth filter, too, he realised when he blurted out the answer without thinking it through.

"I am Nico. Just not the one that you know. Or, rather, not know that well."

When the words left his lips, though, he wished he had not said anything. Wincing a little, he shrunk back as far as he could when backed against the wall.

The violent response he had expected, for that answer, did not come.

Instead, he had Jason staring at him with a look that was half-worry, half-"do-you-think-I'm-an-idiot".

His fingers, wrapped around Nico's throat, tightened slightly, making him uncomfortably aware that this Jason probably had never seen him as a friend and therefore would not hesitate to hurt him, no matter how reluctant he may be to hurt Jason.

Thankfully, though, this Jason did not just finish him off, or beat him up to get some answers. Instead, he gave Nico a chance, one for which he would likely be eternally grateful for.

"Prove it."

* * *

><p>*** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***<p> 


	8. Trust

_Alright, another missed dateline, so, to make up for it, I've increased the word count! It's still not that long, but well. Also, have you had hot water dumped on you before? It hurts a lot, and the skin actually peels off, which well. I'm not going that far here, though, Nico has been through enough. It'll hurt for a while though. :P Read & Review!_

**Disclaimers:** I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

**Warnings:** Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

**Summary:** For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it?

'Thoughts'  
>"Speech"<br>_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

><p><strong>Trust<strong>

He had two options.

He could be more sensible and realistic, and pretend that he had never said anything, then continue trying to live as his doppelganger.

Or, he could be reckless for one and just throw caution to the wind, never mind where that got him the last him he actually did that. He could tell the truth and try to gain Jason's support and help in trying to find his way back. Oh, he would be running the risk of sounding like even more of a madman than Jason already thought he was, and he knew that it was entirely possible Jason would not believe him regardless of what he did, but at least he would know that he had tried. That he had done things the way he knew he would not regret, for once, and that Jason had simply chosen not to believe him.

For a moment, he had been tempted to go for the first option.

It sounded a lot easier than the second option. Mind you, it just sounds easier, it is actually a hell lot harder, but he was tempted.

Without making a conscious decision, though, he awkwardly rolled up his left sleeve. It was hard, within the limited space, given how Jason had caged him against the door, but he managed, and Jason glanced down sceptically.

Nico could see the exact moment he realised what Nico was trying to show when he did what he had.

"You don't have a timer," he stated. It was clear that he was not looking for an affirmation, rather, it simply slipped out as he was startled. Regardless, Nico confirmed that it was true.

He got no reaction from Jason for that.

After a pause, Jason let go of Nico's throat, pushing the sleeve on Nico's other arm up too.

"How?" he asked, furrowing his brows a little now, looking confused. The disbelief was evident, both in his voice and his countenance.

"I told you. I'm not from this world. We met one night from different sides of the mirror, then, we switched."

"The mirror?" Jason sounded rather dubious.

Nico looked at the clock.

3:13 PM.

"Come back here at 3:50AM, I'll show you."

Jason looked at him doubtfully. "I think I'll just stay here with you."

There was a long pause then.

Nico looked away as he cleared his throat. "If you're alright with this, we could do some homework," he suggested.

Jason agreed, having nothing better in mind.

He kept on guard, though, as Nico excused himself to the bathroom to change his clothes. Nico kept quiet about how much the burn hurts, dressing it quickly with whatever was present in the bathroom before coming out.

They spent the rest of the day clearing their homework planners. It took a surprisingly long while to be done, and then they spent some more time in silence, staring at their completed work. Jason started talking about history then, filling up the silence that had gaped, and, for a while, Jason reminded Nico of his friend form back home. Suddenly, his mind wandered back to how things were going there. How well was mirror-him handling his life? What if Jason, or Leo, or, gods forbid, Reyna or Hazel, figured out that that was not him?

Stop worrying and thinking, Nico chided himself firmly. You cannot change anything anymore. This is currently your reality, and until you can get back, it will be your life. Just like your life would be his. Just trust that he can handle it.

Time passed reasonably quickly afterwards, and it was dinner time too soon. The two of them had instant noodles, since Nico was horrible at cooking, and, while Jason said that he could make a fairly decent meal, the refrigerator and the pantry were both devoid of edible food items. Apparently, mother only stocked up when she was going to cook.

After that, they sat there in an awkward silence for a while before Jason suggested they watch a movie to pass time. They ended up watching Rise Of The Guardians. They fell into a companionable mood after that, behaving as if they were friends. There was a debate on who was better, Jack Frost or Bunnymund, and it was 3:50AM before they knew it.

Picking himself up, he ignored the prickly feeling of unease. What if the portal does not appear this time, period? No one has ever been around when he saw the portal. Jason was here, though, and he did not want to let go of this possible friendship so easily.

Alerting Jason to the time, he brought him to the bathroom.

Picking himself up, he alerted Jason to that fact, and brought him to the bathroom.

Jason stared at the mirror for a long while. He then turned to Nico, the doubt returning in his eye. 'There's nothing there."

Nico glanced at the clock. 3:58AM.

"Just one more minute," he told Jason.

Still suspicious now, Jason turned back to the mirror.

The mirror rippled a little. Jason's expression was comical when the reflection disappeared, replaced by a solid, grey surface instead.

The clock read 3:59AM.

Jason reached out to touch the mirror.

He watched, clearly slightly fascinated, as the mirror surface appear to pull him in. Then, he frowned. "There's something here."

"Yeah," Nico said.

"You said that you came through here." Jason sounded slightly puzzled now.

"I did," Nico agreed. "We agreed on one day."

"One day?"

"One day," Nico echoed. "We switch places, one day. Then, I found this wall."

Jason started pushing.

"You can't get past it."

Jason paused, turning around to look at Nico.

"Why not?"

Nico shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "It was there when I tried to get back, and it remained there for the next few days. Until I can either remove it, or build a new portal somehow, I'm stuck here."

Jason went back to gaping at the mirror. It would be comical, if Nico had not been waiting for a better reaction than this. What if he decided to distance himself after this, just in case this sort of bad luck was contagious?

Although he sounded slightly disbelieving, when Jason finally did react, it was not to run away. Like a normal, sensible person. Rather, it was to reiterate, "Okay."

A little like a broken recording tape.

Finally, he told Nico that he believed him, he just needed time to process this, because 'holy schist this stuff actually happens, it's possible to get to another world, a world with weird stuff and another version of myself and the person who got stranded here is apparently a best friend of mine in that world and now he's in this world and I'm his friend not friend and I need time to get this fully stuck in my head.'

Nico wisely choose to keep quiet. He couldn't help the relief that flooded him when he realised that Jason was not just going to abandon him, and that he believed Nico, though. It relieved a weight he had not noticed was present until it was gone. He actually had a potential friend in Jason, now, and there was a high chance that they could become really good friends like they were in his past reality.

Maybe it was selfish to cling on to his past life and his image of someone that was not the person he was facing now, but still. It would be something reasonably familiar to fall back on.

They need not be enemies or strangers.

He had not realized just how much he had relied on his friends for companionship and other little things until they were absent from his life, and it was only when Jason showed signs that it was entirely possible he would not hate Nico that he figured out just how much he missed having his friends around, even if at times, they were annoying.

They had cared, and that was more than he could say for so many people in his life.

He knew that Jason had probably seen something in his eyes, for he reached out and hugged Nico. It was brief, but it was there and real. Nico fought not to just let go and allow himself to stop being _him_.

Jason was still Jason's doppelganger.

A virtual stranger.

They settled down back on Nico's bunk.

For one long moment, they stared at each other, then the floodgates opened and Jason began to talk. He filled Nico in on his doppelganger's life, letting him know what he had not found out, starting from when they were both kids.

Apparently, the two of them used to be really close. They had practically been brothers, having grown up together due to the fact that their fathers had once worked together and always left one at the other's place for babysitting. There was a disagreement somewhere down the line, though, and they stopped being able to see eye to eye for certain issues. Then, they had a fall out when Jason came clean that he had a crush on Bianca, as it was clear that Jason's parents had had someone in mind for him right from the start and that if Jason pursued Bianca, he would only be leaving her heartbroken.

Jason had kept an eye out for him, though, when Bianca mentioned in the passing that something was off about her little brother. Nico had not seem suspicious when he was nice to him, which was why he had cornered Nico, as he knew that there was something really wrong, or odd, happening.

Which led to this encounter.

As Jason spoke, Nico lost himself in the companionship, the familiarity of this situation, how he and Jason would sometimes sit down on their bad days and just talk.

So, when Jason was done talking, Nico took over, telling him about some parts of his life back home – how Jason was basically his hero from the first time they met, when Jason stood up for him after finding him crying in the locker room after being laughed at and teased mercilessly for the entire first half of the year, resulting in a fight with people he had once called friends. How it led to him becoming an outcast, because he associated himself with the resident freak, and how they subsequently came to know Leo, Reyna and Rachel.

How they stuck together because, if they didn't look out for each other, no one else would look out for them. Because they were all the leftovers, after all, the freak show, comprising of Leo (The kid who had sat outside the workshop as it burnt down around his mother, too mute to say anything, accused of being an arsonist and a devil and sent into the system, shuttled around from foster home to foster home for being too loud and too nervous and for constantly running away, a kid whose dream as a kid was to build a dragon named Happy that would fly him to his mother), Reyna (The daughter of the local gang leader, found with blood on her hands the day her sister called the police to report the fact that their father was murdered by someone, raised on the streets because she had not been legal and only barely hanging on in school because one teacher saw her potential), Rachel (The 'psychic' who was almost sent into the psychiatric ward for an overactive imagination, kept drugged for the better part of her life before school for believing in monsters and gods, living in her own world, magic and reality being rather relative to her), him (The kid whose sister shone in everything and whose brilliant life was snuffed out by a single drunk driver who got careless, the boy who talked to shadows and air too much and too loudly, the kid who was too scrawny too small too weak and too helpless, the boy who disappeared from school and actually got into the mental hospital for having OCD and then breaking down, trying to commit suicide).

Gods.

They were all so messed up, weren't they?

Jason was the only one who was normal. Then again, normal was relative.

There were some parts he never said anything about, though. Like how Hazel had walked in and became the only light of his life, because that was dangerous territory, the messy 'relationship' with Percy and the mess that was called Percy being nice now, the fact that his mother had walked out on the family, because he was a failure and Bianca had always been better.

When he found that he couldn't bring himself to actually say any more, he simply went quiet and studied the patterns on his blanket. He did not want to see Jason judging, don't think he could bear it now. The sunlight had filtered through the heavy curtains, he noted dimly. Risking a quick look at the time, he almost winced.

They had been talking for really, really long.

When a long while passed by without a response from Jason, Nico started getting worried. Had he crossed a line he shouldn't have, a line he can't uncross?

He probably shouldn't have dumped his emotional baggage on Jason, he couldn't believe he let his rational filters disappear, but Jason, being there and willing to listen and hear him out, was something that had never failed to get him to spill.

He had been stranded, in an unfamiliar place with strange customs and laws, for weeks, even if Jason was a technical stranger, by being there, he had made this something slightly familiar, something Nico clung on and latched onto way too quickly.

Forgive him for being too quick to trust this time round.

The time passing made the silence weigh down with tension, and it made Nico's skin crawl. The burn started throbbing again, reminding him of its existence, a dull throb that was surprisingly hard to drown out. He started noticing that the cloth was excessively wrinkled. There were some eraser dust clumped together there, too, in the corner, from when they did homework on the bed earlier on.

"Look at me," Jason suddenly requested.

It startled Nico a little. It took a while for him to be able to meet Jason's eyes squarely, sure he would find rejection, possibly pity, too, there.

Instead of that, though, he found a sort of…muted awe and admiration? He blinked a little, not entirely sure what to make of it, or that he had interpreted the look correctly. Jason saved him the trouble, pressing on.

"Thank you."

Nico had nothing to say to that. Jason must have noticed, as he continued, "You trusted me enough to tell me, and I know that it wasn't easy for you to talk about that. Thank you for believing that I can be trusted."

"I…" Nico scrambled for some words he could use, coming up with nothing. Jason was thanking him for talking?

Jason stood up, then. Offering Nico his hand, he stated, "Come."

For a moment, Nico recalled Rachel offering to help him up before this disaster.

He blinked, refocusing on Jason, who was looking at him expectantly. Accepting the offered hand, Nico stretched slightly after he stood up.

Jason led him out of the room. Nico followed without much protest, knowing that there really was nothing much worse that could possibly happen. Besides, his instincts told him to trust Jason not to hurt him, and there was no reason for him to now.

As they went towards the door, though, Nico got a little wary.

"Jason?"

He did not respond.

Nico was given enough time to lock up the house before Jason led him to a car parked across the streets. "Jason?" Nico repeated.

"Do you trust me?" Jason asked in lieu of a reply.

Nico understood then. Keeping quiet, he buckled up in the shotgun seat, letting Jason lead. Jason drove him to the library, before doubling up, going back the way they came, only with shortcuts and long-way-rounds this time.

"What are you doing?" Nico asked, when Jason slid into a shadowed alley and turned off the engines.

"You trusted me with something important."

Nico wasn't sure what the appropriate response would be. Jason did not appear to require one, or expect one, though. Without looking at Nico, he continued, "I'll trust you with something important too."

That was when another car drove down the road they had driven past just now. It looked quite familiar, although it took Nico a while to realise that it was the same one he had saw when he first entered the car with Jason. He suddenly understood what Jason had been doing.

"Who's tailing us?"

"The Council," Jason replied after a pause. "Your father is a Creator that was a liability the Council does not really trust. Well, you're mother's a Creator too, but she's pretty clean, so if I'm not wrong, they're tailing you because they knew you were close to your father."

"Are they trailing me, or you? Wasn't your father a Creator, too?"

"They're trailing both of us. And yeah, he was one of the original three Creators, alongside your father and Percy's father," Jason remarked, almost offhandedly.

Another car drove by.

Nico was more distracted by Jason's words.

"Isn't Paul Percy's father?"

Jason looked at him, a question clear in his eyes, before he apparently decided that it was probably normal that Nico might knew more than he had told him. Or, that he could be horribly misinformed. "Paul is Percy's step father, but he was caught in a collapsed building a while ago." Seeing Nico's confusion, he elaborated, "Paul was a Creator, but he was in charge of the housings division. He was investigating."

"So, Poseidon is Percy's father?"

"Yeah," Jason confirmed.

The third car drove by, and Jason started up the engine.

"Clear now?"

"Usually it's only two, or three. I think that's all there is."

As they continued cruising along the road, Nico asked, "Where, exactly, are you taking me to?"

Jason drove for a while, checking the rear view mirror occasionally, before answering.

"We're going to meet the Demigods."

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><p>*** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***<p> 


	9. The Demigods

_Nicknames! They'll have a super lengthy discussion about nicknames in this chapter. And yay, Nico would be friends with someone other than Jason! I should be able to post another chapter sometime this week, since we have a long weekend this time. Hope it's not too draggy *_* Read & Review!_

**Disclaimers:** I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

**Warnings:** Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

**Summary:** For almost seven months, Nico spends a small amount of time in a world his subconscious created, living a life he could have had, in his dreams. Perhaps the dream life was not perfect, but it was still an escape, a safe haven, from a reality that was a disaster. As far as he was concerned, though, it was just a dream. Wasn't it?

'Thoughts'  
>"Speech"<br>_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

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><p><strong>The Demigods<strong>

Silence greeted their arrival.

"Hey," Jason said a little awkwardly, attempting to divert their attention.

It failed. The spotlight remained on Nico. He hovered a little awkwardly behind Jason, not entirely sure what was appropriate for him to do, or how he was expected to respond or react.

Rachel reacted for him.

"What did you bring him here for?!" she exclaimed, the disbelief evident in her voice. She stood up, looking at Jason as if there was something wrong with him.

Nico managed a poker face despite the loathing and dislike plain as daylight in her voice. He knew that she was rarely impulsive, that she was pretty level-headed. Even when she was insulting him in class, she took time to think through her words. This was pretty important, then.

"He could be really helpful," Jason begun, trying to placate her.

Reyna did not wait for him to continue. "What did you do to him?" Reyna directed the question at Nico, a cold fury hardening her voice, accusation clearly there.

"Why do you assume he did something to me?" Jason responded immediately, sounding a little indignant.

"No offense, man, but you are quite gullible sometimes," Leo pointed out, eyeing Nico with some wariness now that the initial shock of finding him at the door behind Jason wore off.

"How do you even know that we can trust him?" Hazel added.

"We could at least hear him out first, before judging," Frank suggested.

Nico wondered exactly what his doppelganger had done, to garner the dislike, or, at the very least, the distrust, of all of them. Even Percy, who was standing at the back, had looked incredulous and speechless at Frank's suggestion.

Percy, who was supposed to be his boyfriend.

Noticing their expressions, Frank hastily added, "But I'm not defending him, or anything like that. It's just not entirely fair to just judge first without giving him a chance. There must be a reason Jason trusts him."

They considered his words for a moment, before looking at Nico expectantly. He stared back, unsure of what was expected. Jason nudged him a little.

"Uh…" He should just say something. There's nothing much he could lose anyway. The only thing that might go wrong, of course, is that they get fed up when he continues having nothing to say, or that they don't believe him and Jason. The problem, though, was that he had no idea what he could, or should, say.

He wasn't prepared for this. As they continued looking at him, he truly wished that a portal would just appear under him and take him somewhere else. He did not break eye contact with them, though, staring back at them.

"Show them what you showed me?" Jason prompted when the silence dragged.

He rolled up his sleeve, grateful for the suggestion. And the distraction. As one, they gaze had been drawn to his arm. Then, it travelled back up, filled with suspicion and incredulity this time. Nico returned his arm to its positions by his side, challenging them to question him silently.

Hazel asked on behalf of the rest.

"Why do you have no time counter?"

The answer Nico had prepared was stuck in his throat. It sounded absurd, even in his head, so how much worse would it sound when he verbalised it? Thankfully, Jason answered for him again. "He switched with the Nico we know, so he's technically a stranger to this world. We can trust him, he's not really on the Council's side."

"Then who is he?" Reyna asked.

"Nico di Angelo, just, from a parallel universe. The original agreement, of course, was one day, but the portal got blocked. I couldn't get back anymore." Reyna looked at Nico with distaste, before turning back to Jason.

"How did you end up trusting him so easily?"

Nico knew that he should be offended that she was clearly dismissing his presence. He understood her too well, though, and this was one of her defensive mechanisms. She hated it when she lost control of the situation and has no idea where things were going, and, well, this was a prime example of a situation she could not control. That's what make her a good leader, as well as a bad one. She's too organised.

Nico knew that he should be offended that she was speaking as if he was not around, but he understood her too well. She was good at avoiding, too, and he knew that she hated it when she had lost control of the situation, or had no idea where things were going. Therefore, he could understand why she did not want to speak to him at the moment.

"He hasn't lied to me, Reyna. That aside, he has no idea how this world works, it's best that we get him on our side before he figure that the Council is the right side to be on."

"Why would we even want him on our side?"

Rachel.

Figures.

Honestly? Nico had never once thought he would see the day that both Reyna and Rachel would hate him with the hatred they usually reserved for Octavian and his jocks.

Jason's answer caught him off guard. "Leo's the only real engineer we have here aside from Annabeth, and he's the only one who truly understand machines like the newest weapons against the MaiVisto, as well as time counters. Even then, Leo, I'm truly sorry, but you don't know enough about these machines, especially the time counters, to let us make too much difference. Nico has that bit of knowledge we lack, though, and he would be contributing to our cause as much as we would be helping him get used to this world. Mutually beneficial."

Immediately, Annabeth had a rebuttal. "If he's not from this world, how could he know more than us?" Nico had thought of that, too. Honestly, he was struggling to keep his head above the waters in school, all this things were clearly extracurricular, and there was no way he would know more than them.

Jason, apparently, disagreed. "He's an outsider, sure. Their world is more technologically advanced than ours, though, even if ours is more scientifically evolved. But that's the thing, you see. We all grew up in this place, we've been raised to think about things a certain way, and we all know that that certain way had gotten us into the rut we're stuck in now. We can't move forward, but if we stop, we would lose all the progress we have made. That's why we need new blood, and this is someone who is entirely new to the whole system and the whole world. He could possibly help us find new flaws or loopholes in the things we overlooked, because everything was too familiar to us."

He wasn't done.

Taking a breath, he continued on his spiel. "All that aside, I bet you don't know that Nico was actually good at science, no matter how abysmal his grades are. I don't know if it's faking to spite his parents, or it was to hide his talent from the Council, but I saw his notes, and I'll tell you that he knows a lot. A lot more than we can find out from our various sources. If I'm not wrong, Hades actually coaches his son privately, which means that with the notes that Nico has, we could get really, really far. Adding to that, the boy we have now had been thrown into a world with an entirely new world of science, and the fact that everything he learnt is from notes made by the Nico from our world or from the books left lying around. It's amazing that he's not only not been failing spectacularly, his grasp on the concepts is at least as good as mine, if not better. He's a fast learner, we wouldn't be held back. We could use the extra help."

Nico had forgotten entirely about the fact that he had spent a lot of time doodling xkcd comics he could remember in the notebooks, as well as making his own notes about the differences between the two worlds' sciences. There was one notebook, though, that he sincerely hoped Jason had not touched. He knew, when he wrote those things down, that they probably should have stayed within his head. They weren't made to be read by anyone other than him.

Silently, he also wondered if the homework session was really only a recruitment interview, or if Jason actually needed help with his work. He had always thought of Jason as a really nice but hopelessly unassuming guy, who was reasonably clueless beyond the scope of interest he had, but he was starting to re-evaluate his opinion of Jason. Perhaps this Jason was different, or it could just be that he had clung on to what he believed about Jason and how he should be, missing out on the obvious and only noticing now that it was impossible not to notice.

Seeing that they were still not entirely sold on the idea, he gave them yet another speech. "We formed this group to help people in the first place, didn't we? Especially the people the Council deems unimportant. Wouldn't we be going against our first rule of helping innocents and victims if we didn't help him just because he replaced someone we were not on friendly terms with? He's not the person we had known. The least we could do is to give him a chance to prove that he can be trusted."

"Can I see that notebook?" Annabeth asked.

Jason procured it, and Nico realized that Jason must have anticipated the request. He had not seen Jason take it, though.

As she was looking through it, Leo looked over her shoulders. Hazel and Rachel followed suite.

"If he can't be trusted?"

Of course Reyna was the one to ask that question.

"Give him the benefit of the doubt, Reyna, please? Even if you don't trust him, you trust my judgment, right? I'm not always wrong, you know. I'll vouch for him." Nico was not entirely sure what that meant, however, whatever it was, it means a lot to Reyna.

She gave a resigned sigh, and pointed out, "You're not always wrong, Jason, but if you are wrong, you'll be bringing all of us down with you."

Nico could tell from the tone that she had already given in to his request, accepting that Jason was going to be stubborn about this.

He still appreciated Leo standing up for him, though. "Give him a chance, Reyna. At least half of the stuff in here is not only legitimate, I'm pretty sure it's so classified that if the Council knew we had access to it, they would hunt us down and kill us." Leo waggled his eyebrows Jason. "I'm starting to reassess your taste, Grace, the di Angelo couple clearly had been educating their kids well, tell me when you stop being interested in the girl, I want her too."

"Fine," Reyna conceded finally.

There was reluctance as she welcomed Nico into their community, though. She then proceeded to conscript the rest to help her in planning a robbery. Or something like that. Whether it was on purpose or not, she left Leo out of it, so, naturally, Jason left Nico with Leo after telling him that he should not offend anyone here, and that if anyone asked, they never met, so Nico cannot be friendly with them in public.

After he was gone, Leo and Nico stood there for a while in an awkward silence.

Leo started the conversation. "How well do…how are we like in your world?"

"We're friends." Catching Leo's look, Nico elaborated. "Pretty good friends. I know your father has a huge family out there that does not involve you and your mother. And your best friend when you were younger was Festus the Happy Dragon. It got you teased mercilessly by almost everyone. Not sure if it applies in this world, though."

"It's mostly true. Do you have more?"

Nico blinked at him. "More facts about your life? Really?"

Leo nodded.

"Well, the first girl you had a crush on was Jason's sister, Thalia Grace, but I haven't seen her around in this world, so I'm not too sure if you know her. The first girl you got the courage to ask out was Khione, and she dumped her iced drink on you in front of the cafeteria for that. In front of the whole level. Then there's Calypso, the first girl you actually dated, and she eventually left you because she disagreed with your choice of friends. Which is me, Jason, Rachel, Reyna. Hazel, too, because she's my half-sister back home."

Leo snorted out a laugh. "You sound like an obsessed stalker who is way too interested in my love life. Which, by the way, is non-existent in this world."

Nico glared at him.

"You were the one who filled me in on every little aspect of your life. I did not ask to hear about your escapades with Calypso in the locker room, or the…"

"Alright, alright, I get it, don't continue, I really don't want to know the details either, do you know how weird this is? Angel – can I call you Angel? – did we have nicknames?"

"Nicknames."

"Yeah, usually we have nicknames. I mean, Jason's called blondie here, but it's mostly since we barely know each other and Annabeth is already known as wise girl, but, yeah. So?"

"Jason's Captain America. It's a comic series that got turned into a movie. It's about WWII, which is a war between the Axis and the Allies. And, of course, you don't get the reference, but it's alright. Reyna's always been…well, Reyna. It's Reyna, you know? Rachel was red. Rachel Elizabeth Dare."

"That's her full name?! I'm so going to tease the hell out of her, you know that she always only use the initial for her middle name? Elizabeth, who even names their children that anymore?"

"Her father does. Frank's Teddy. He looks like a giant teddy bear, please do not tell me you've never thought that."

Leo stared at him. "He was okay with that name?"

"That's what Hazel calls him. They're a couple, right?"

"They're a couple?" Leo glanced over at the closed door, behind which the group was discussing whatever it was they were talking about. A giant grin split his face. "Oh my gods, I'm so going to win that bet!" Leo looked back at Nico. "What's mine?"

"Yours- oh, you're da Vinci."

"What?"

"You tried to replicate all of Leonardo Da Vinci's work. Do you understand now?"

Leo groaned. "Really? Why would I do that? That old dude was so wrong about… wait, is he right about science in your world?"

"He's important. He also has this painting, Mona Lisa. Do you have that here? I'll assume the answer's no then."

"Mona Lisa? Who is even called that?"

"No idea. No one knows, really, and he was died pretty long ago."

They sank back into a silence, before Leo suddenly started speaking again. "It's not easy for you here, is it? Especially since this world is mirrored, so most of the things are too similar, just not identical, and it's difficult for you to remember sometimes, isn't it? Since I'm your friend back home, I'll make an effort to be your friend here, too. Make it easier, you know? And I don't know about your friend back home, but if it was me, I would want for you to know that you can count on me not to let you down no matter which universe I belong to, so I'm not going to be your enemy. Just so you know."

Nico let out a startled laugh. Leo paused, looking at him quizzically, as if he did not realize Nico could laugh. It reminded Nico so much of the expression Leo puts on every single time Nico finally cracks and laughs at his jokes with him that he felt a pang in his chest, missing Leo more than ever, even though he was just there, in front of him.

"I – It's just, you're really like him, Leo back home, I mean, but he's always joking, to the point I kind of forget, sometimes, that he's capable of being deep and serious about things. And yes, he's a really loyal person, he never gives up on anyone, ever. I used to tell him to stay away from me, but he refused to leave, and just annoyed his way into my life and annoyed me into letting him stay around, and you – I mean, Leo, from back home, used to call me Angel when you wanted to annoy me or be particularly irritating," Nico explained.

They stared at each other for a while before Nico decided that he had enough of these topics, and got on to the diagrams and notes made in the notebook. They left this topic quickly enough, diving into the theoretical world both were more comfortable with.

Leo had enthusiastically analysed everything that was present, explaining them to Nico page by page starting from the first page after Nico admitted that he was actually finding it hard to accept the logic of this world. The differences in their sciences was quite jarring at times and hard to discern other times, making it hard for him to make no mistakes when trying to do the homework. He also admitted that he actually did not fully understand what was written in the notebook, as the things there sometimes made Nico more confused than anything else.

It soon became an exchange of information of sorts – for every question Nico asked about this world's science, Leo would ask questions of his own in turn, trying to figure out what happened in Nico's reality. He found the idea of the internet fascinating, the same way he did not quite believe that smartphones were truly possible. What they both agreed on, however, was that it was weird – rocket science here was light years ahead of that of Nico's own world, and the emphasis on space-time science and finance was so much more than that of Nico's reality, yet the technology and everyday creature comforts of Nico's old reality was way, way ahead of that in this world.

Leo theorized that it was likely because their priority was different – in Nico's reality, they wanted to breakthrough, discover new things and test limits of different fields, causing them to be better-rounded in general, expanding out in everything they could possibly explore, but slower in terms of progress made. Here, though, due to the aliens and the resource constraints, everything was focused in a few fields, making advances in leaps and bounds, while everything else was mostly ignored, as they were largely considered unimportant. After all, if you're not alive, you won't be able to enjoy the everyday things around you, or try to make more progress.

Nico completely agree.

Sometime into their discussion, however, Percy interrupted them, indicating that he wanted to talk to Nico. Nico hesitated, before deciding that nothing bad could come of it. He did give Leo a wilting look for winking at him when Percy had left the room, knowing that Leo's mind had retreated from the light and was residing in the gutter at this point of time.

Percy led him to the room that most likely belonged to the person whose family stays here, in this gigantic house. On his first look at the room, he knew instantly that this was Rachel's room, and that she most likely spends most of her time in here, if she was not over at someone else's place.

The walls were painted with colours, splashes of it that here and there that should have looked completely out of place. Instead, they added to the room, highlighting the background and making this room look less…sterile. There were other personal touches – a little sitting room slash library set up underneath the loft bed that takes up half of the gigantic, spacious room, a half-done canvas of abstract art, mostly completed clay sculptures and one stained display case filled with completed works that she must have submitted for competitions.

He stepped into the room before Percy did, trying to find his footing in this eerily similar, yet slightly different, room that belonged to someone who used to be his best friend.

Percy closed the door behind him, and Nico turned around to face him.

That was when it sunk in that they were alone.

That Percy was the only other person in this room, aside from him.

* * *

><p>*** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***<p> 


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